• Ki-Chul Park, Ye-Soo Park, Wan-Sik Seo, Jun-Ki Moon, and Bo-Hyun Kim.
• Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Guri Hospital, Hanyang University College of Medicine, Guri, Korea.
• J Crit Care. 2014 Aug 1;29(4):694.e7-9.

PurposeThe purpose of study was to evaluate the clinical results of early stabilization of spine fractures in polytrauma patients.Materials And MethodsBetween August 2003, and May 2012, 166 polytrauma patients with thoracolumbar spine fractures were included. Patients were divided into 2 groups according to injury-to-operation time (time cut-off, 72 hours). Patients were also subdivided into 4 groups according to injury severity score (ISS), and the clinical course was evaluated.ResultsGroup A showed shorter hospital length of stay, intensive care unit, and ventilator days than group B. For each of these categories, the differences between the 2 groups were statistically significant (P=.004, P=.044, and P=.043). Patients with moderate to severe injury (ISS, ≥26), those who were treated with early stabilization showed shorter hospital length of stay, intensive care unit, and ventilator days than the patients with mild to moderate injury (ISS, <26), and the differences were statistically significant (P=.004, P=.006, and P=.006).ConclusionPolytrauma patients whose spine fractures were stabilized within 72 hours had better clinical outcomes than those with late stabilization. In addition, more severely injured patients (ISS, ≥26) benefited more from early stabilization.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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