Surgical infections
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Surgical infections · Feb 2008
Fever and leukocytosis in critically ill trauma patients: it's not the urine.
Infectious complications are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in critically ill trauma patients. Therefore, fever and leukocytosis often trigger an extensive laboratory workup that includes a urine culture (UCx). The purposes of this study were to: 1) Define the current practice for obtaining UCxs in trauma patients admitted to the surgical and trauma intensive care unit (STICU); and 2) determine if there is an association between fever or leukocytosis and urinary tract infections (UTIs) during the initial 14 hospital days. ⋯ The practice of obtaining a UCx from the STICU trauma patient was related to fever and fever with leukocytosis. However, neither fever nor leukocytosis nor both were associated with UTIs. These data suggest that there is an unnecessary emphasis on UTI as a source of fever and leukocytosis in injured patients during their first 14 STICU days. Our results suggest that the paradigm for evaluating UTI as a cause of fever needs to be reevaluated in critically ill trauma patients.