2026 ESO Trauma Index Insights and Best Practices

The 2026 ESO Trauma Index is a technical report that presents insights and best practices for trauma systems, derived from over 84,000 patient encounters across 100 facilities. This fifth edition focuses on decision points in trauma care, utilizing a standardized dataset to enhance performance and patient outcomes. The report outlines five key measures, including Injury Severity Score (ISS), blood product administration, inter-facility transfers, management of open long bone fractures, and traumatic brain injury (TBI). Each measure includes operational definitions, narrative analyses, and best practice recommendations. The report emphasizes the importance of using the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) 2015 for injury coding, which reflects contemporary understanding of injury patterns. It encourages trauma centers to compare their data against the findings to drive improvements in clinical, operational, and financial outcomes. The report is designed to support trauma centers in enhancing their quality improvement programs and adapting to evolving standards in trauma care.