The incidence of organ dysfunction and failure in patients with abdominal trauma

Introduction

Trauma patients have a high mortality and more often develop organ failure with poor outcome.

Objective

To study the incidence of organ dysfunction and failure, and the impact on mortality of patients who were admitted to an ICU with abdominal trauma without other lesions.

Materials and methods

We studied patients admitted to a trauma ICU from 1 January 2001 to 31 December 2003. The Sequential Organ Failure Assessment score at admission was measured; we considered points 1 and 2 of the score as dysfunction and points 3 and 4 as failure.

Results

A total of 77 patients were studied and the mortality was 31%; the mortality of the general population with multiple traumas (725 patients) was 39%. The incidence of organ dysfunction and failure, with the correspondent mortality, is illustrated in Table 1.

Table 1 Incidence of organ dysfunction and failure in abdominal trauma patients

Conclusion

The frequency of coagulation and renal dysfunction and failure is higher in patients with abdominal trauma than in patients with multiple trauma. The presence of renal, cardiovascular and hematological failures was associated with higher mortality in patients with abdominal trauma than in patients with multiple trauma.