The Trauma Registry at LAC+USC Medical Center is under the direction of the Trauma Program Manager, Shirley Nomoto RN. Six full time registered nurses are assigned to extract data from charts, code and score injuries, implement the quality improvement program, and assist with report generation for research projects.  

Research projects are supported by Sonia Vizcarra, our data manager who provides data for all of the research projects.

Sonia Vizcarra

The Los Angeles County EMS agency designates selection criteria for entry into the registry. LAC+USC Medical Center enters over 4,000 trauma patients into the registry annually. An additional 3,000 trauma patients are entered into an access database. These are patients who meet the ACS criteria for trauma patients based on ICD-9 scores. LAC+USC Medical Center sees 25% of the total volume of trauma patients in Los Angeles County. There are over 45,000 cases in the LAC+USC database. The registry data is downloaded to the Los Angeles County EMS agency trauma data bank. It is also sent to the National Trauma Data Bank.

LAC+USC Medical Center is one of the nation's largest trauma centers. Highlighted below are the trauma admissions over the last 7 years; as can be seen about 25% of the patients present with penetrating trauma.

	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Total Pts.	5444	5648	5838	5327	5920	6573	6341
Blunt	4234	4503	4776	4293	4968	5542	5421
Penetrating	1210	1145	1062	1034	952	1031	920
Pediatric	360	402	491	423	645	635	701
* These figures do not include non-trauma emergency surgery patients.