• Tracey Kim, Christopher Celis, Andrew Pop, Kaitlin McArthur, Thomas Robert Bushell, Xian Luo-Owen, Lourdes Swentek, Sigrid Burruss, Steven Brooks, David Turay, and Kaushik Mukherjee.
• Division of Acute Care Surgery, Loma Linda University Medical Center, 11175 Campus Street, CP 21111, Loma Linda, CA, 92350, USA.
• Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg. 2022 Apr 1; 48 (2): 943-952.

PurposeSedation management of trauma patients after damage control laparotomy (DCL) has not been optimized. We evaluated if shorter sedation exposure was associated with increased proportion of delirium-free/coma-free (DF/CF-ICU) days and change in time to definitive fascial closure (DFC).MethodsWe reviewed trauma DCL patients at an ACS-verified level I center over 5 years as shorter (SE) or longer than median (LE) sedation exposure. We compared demographics, injury patterns, hemodynamic parameters, and injury severity between groups. We calculated the propensity for each patient to achieve DFC using age, gender, ISS, red blood cell transfusion, bowel discontinuity, abdominal vascular injury, and time to first takeback; we then determined the effect of sedation exposure on rate of DFC by multivariate Cox regression, adjusted for propensity to achieve DFC. We used linear regression adjusted for age, ISS, head-AIS, bowel discontinuity, and vascular injury to determine the effect of sedation exposure on the proportion of DF/CF-ICU days.Results65 patients (33.8% penetrating) had mean age 41.8 ± 16.0, ISS 27.1 ± 14.2, Head-AIS 1.2 ± 1.6 and median sedation exposure of 2.2 [IQR 0.78, 7.3] days (35 SE and 30 LE). Pattern and severity of solid organ injuries and proportion of small and large bowel and vascular injuries were similar between groups. LE had more abdominal sepsis (23.3% vs 0%, p = 0.003) and enterocutaneous fistula (16.7% vs 0%, p = 0.016), and more ventilator (17.3 ± 12.7 vs 6.1 ± 6.8, p < 0.001), ICU (20.8 ± 14.2 vs 7.2 ± 7.6, p < 0.001), and hospital days (29.6 ± 19.6 vs 13.9 ± 9.0, p < 0.001). DFC was achieved more rapidly in the SE group (2.0 ± 1.5 days vs 3.9 ± 3.7 days [unadjusted], p = 0.023) and SE had a higher proportion of unadjusted DF/CF-ICU days (33.0 ± 32.0% vs 18.1 ± 16.4%, p = 0.020). SE was associated with an increased proportion of adjusted DF/CF-ICU days by multivariate linear regression (13.1% [95% CI 1.4-24.8%], p = 0.029) and with faster adjusted rate of DFC by multivariate Cox regression (RR 2.28 [95% CI 1.25-4.15, p = 0.007]).ConclusionsShorter sedation exposure is associated with increased proportion of DF/CF-ICU days and more rapid DFC after DCL for trauma.© 2020. Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.

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