• The American surgeon · Sep 2005

    Is field hypotension a reliable indicator of significant injury in trauma patients who are normotensive on arrival to the emergency department?

    • Panna Codner, Amal Obaid, Diana Porral, Stephanie Lush, and Marianne Cinat.
    • University of California Irvine Medical Center, Orange, California 92868, USA.
    • Am Surg. 2005 Sep 1;71(9):768-71.

    AbstractThere is a subset of trauma patients who are hypotensive in the field but normotensive on arrival to the emergency department (ED). Our objective was to evaluate the presence, type, and severity of injuries in these patients. Data were retrospectively reviewed from patients treated at a level 1 trauma center over 1 year. Hypotension was defined as systolic blood pressure (SBP) less than 90 mm Hg. Forty-seven patients were included. The mechanism of injury was blunt in 37 patients and penetrating in 10. The average field SBP was 76 +/- 11 mm Hg. The average SBP on arrival to the ED was 120 +/- 19 mm Hg. The average injury severity score (ISS) was 16.3 +/- 10.3 (range, 1-43). Twenty-four patients (51%) had significant injury (ISS > or = 16). Nine patients (19%) had critical injury (ISS > or = 25). Twenty-six patients (55%) required surgery, and 43 (91%) required ICU admission. Common injury sites included the head and neck (57%), thorax (44%), pelvis and extremities (40%), and abdomen (34%). Overall mortality was 10 per cent (n = 5). All patients that died had significant head and neck injuries (AIS > or = 3). Field hypotension was a significant marker for potential serious internal injury requiring prompt diagnostic workup.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…