Violence and Injury Prevention and Disability (VIP)

Classification systems

Injury surveillance systems and surveys require a standard system for classifying injuries and violence.

The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, tenth revision.

The latest version of the ICD contains an expanded Chapter XIX (injury, poisoning, and certain other consequences of external causes) and Chapter XX (external causes of morbidity and mortality).

International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health

As a new member of WHO Family of International Classifications, ICF describes how people live with their health condition. ICF is a classification of health and health related domains that describe body functions and structures, activities and participation. The domains are classified from body, individual and societal perspectives. Since an individual's functioning and disability occurs in a context, ICF also includes a list of environmental factors.

International Classification of External Causes of Injuries (ICECI)

This taxonomy is a classification scheme related to ICD. It provides classifications and codes for a range of factors that are associated with the occurrence of an injury event. Version 2 has recently been published.

The Abbreviated Injury Scale

The AIS is a classification system for assessing the impact injury severity. It was developed and published by the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine (AAAM). It is the system of choice for coding single injuries and is the foundation for methods assessing multiple injuries or for assessing cumulative effects of more than one injury. These include Maximum AIS (MAIS), Injury Severity Score (ISS), and Probability of Death Score (PODS). The 1998 version is available from the AAAM website - watch this site for AIS2004 which is due for release soon.

Injury Severity Score

The Injury Severity Score (ISS) was first described by Dr Susan Baker in 1974. It is an anatomical scoring system that provides an overall score for patients with multiple injuries. Each injury is assigned an AIS score. To obtain the ISS the 3 most severely injured body regions have their score squared and added together to produce the ISS score. The New Injury Severity Score recently proposed, considers the three most severe injuries, regardless of body region.

Publications and resources

Contact us

Ms. Laura Sminkey
Communications Officer
Email: sminkeyl@who.int
Tel: +41 22 791 45 47