All posts by The Trauma Pro

Abdomen

Do Children With Low Grade Solid Organ Injury Need To Transfer To A Pediatric Trauma Center?

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Pediatric trauma centers have an excellent reputation when it comes to caring for children when compared to their adult counterparts. Overall mortality for major trauma is lower. Splenectomy rates and the use of angiography are less in children with solid organ injury. And because of this expertise, it is common for surrounding trauma centers of all levels transfer these patients to the nearest pediatric trauma center.

But is this always necessary? Many of these children have relatively minor injury, and the pediatric trauma centers can be few and far between unless you are on one of the coasts. Researchers at the University of Washington, Harborview, and Seattle Children’s looked at their experience with pediatric transfers (or lack thereof) with spleen injury.

They retrospectively looked at 15 years of transfer data. The Seattle hospitals are the catchment area for a huge geographic area in the northwest, and the state trauma system maintains detailed records on all transfers to a higher level of care. Patients 16 years or younger with low grade (I-III) spleen injury were included. In an effort to narrow the focus to relatively isolated spleen injury, patients were excluded if they had moderate injuries in other AIS body regions.

Here are the factoids:

  • During the study, over 54,000 patients were admitted to hospitals, but only 1,177 had isolated, low grade spleen injury
  • About 20% presented directly to a Level I or II trauma center, 30% presented to a lower level center and were transferred, and 50% stayed put at the lower level center they to which they presented
  • 40 patients (3%) underwent an abdominal operation presumably for their spleen, but there was no difference based on which hospital they presented to or whether they were transferred
  • The incidence of total splenectomy was not different among the three groups
  • Likewise, there was no difference in ICU admission or ICU length of stay
  • The only significant difference was that patients who were not transferred to a pediatric center usually spent an extra day in the hospital

Bottom line: Injured children tend to do well, regardless of where they are treated. This study is huge and retrospective, which can cause analysis problems. And even given the size, the total number eligible for the study was relatively small. But it is the best study to date that shows that it is possible to treat select low grade injuries at non-pediatric, non-high level trauma centers. However, before going down this path, it is extremely important to define specific “safe” injuries to manage, and to have an escape valve available in case the patient takes an unexpected turn.

CNS, Head

Sports Drinks And Electrolyte Replacement In TBI

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Yesterday, I wrote about the (lack of) effectiveness of forcing hypernatremia in the management of TBI. However, we do know that some of our head injured patients have trouble maintaining a normal sodium level, and if it drops quickly or too far, hyponatremia can certainly cause problems. Trauma professionals have a number of tools to help fix this, including salt supplements or tablets, saline infusions, or even hypertonic saline in more difficult cases.

But what about using a sports drink to replace electrolytes? Isn’t that what athletes do? There are quite a few of these sports drinks on the market, and new ones seem to appear every week. Common examples are Gatorade, Powerade, Muscle Milk, Vitamin Water, 10-K Thirst Quencher, and many more. What if your brain injured patients eschews the salt tabs and insists on pounding down sports drinks all day?

Here is a table from an old sports medicine paper that describes the composition of a number of sports drinks from back in the day. Some, like Gatorade, are still around. (Click image to see a bigger, readable version)

Note that the electrolyte results are in mg/250cc, so I will translate to meq/liter for you. Gatorade had the highest sodium concentration at the time, 20meq/L, and one of the lowest potassiums at 3meq/L. The majority of the current day sports drinks have about the same electrolyte composition. Note that they are all a bit hyperosmolar (300+ mOsm), and this is made possible by added carbohydrate from some type of sugar. The carb is usually in the form of sucrose, dextrose, and/or high fructose corn syrup (yum!).

Bottom line: Your typical sports drink is equivalent to D30 in 0.1 normal saline. Not good for your TBI patient when consumed for sodium supplementation. It will actually drive the serum sodium down when consumed in quantity. Make sure your patients steer clear of this stuff until their brain injury is healed and they are running their next marathon.

Reference: The Effectiveness of Commercially Available Sports Drinks. Sports Med 29(3):181-209, 2000.

CNS, Head

Targeted Hypernatremia In Trauma Brain Injury: Does This Work?

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) frightens and confuses most trauma professionals. The brain and its workings are a mystery, and there is very little real science behind a lot of what we do for TBI. One thing that we do know is that intracranial hypertension is bad. And another is that we do have some potent drugs (mannitol, hypertonic saline) to treat it emergently.

So if we can “dry out” the brain tissue on a moment’s notice and drop the ICP a bit with a hit of sodium, doesn’t it stand to reason that elevating the sodium level constantly might keep the brain from becoming edematous in the first place? Many neurosurgeons buy into this, and have developed protocols to maintain serum sodium levels in the mid-140s and higher. But what about the science?

A nice review was published in Neurocritical care which identified the 3 (!) papers that have promoted this practice in humans with TBI. In general, there was a decrease in ICP in the patients in the cited papers. Unfortunately, there were also a number of serious and sometimes fatal complications, including pulmonary edema and renal failure requiring hemodialysis. These complications generally correlated with the degree of hypernatremia induced. Papers were also reviewed that involved patients with other brain injury, not caused by trauma. Results were similar.

Bottom line: There is no good literature support, standard of care, or even consensus opinion for prophylactically inducing hypernatremia in patients with TBI. The little literature there is involves patients with severe TBI and ICP monitors in place. There is nothing written yet that justifies the expense (ICU level care) and patient discomfort (frequent blood draws) of using this therapy in patients with milder brain injury and a reliable physical exam. If you want to try out this relatively untried therapy, do us all a favor and design a nice study to show that the benefits truly outweigh the risks. 

And if you can point me to some supportive literature that I’ve missed, please do so!

Related posts:

References:

  • Induced and sustained hypernatremia for the prevention and treatment of cerebral edema following brain injury. Neurocrit Care 19:222-231, 2013.
  • Continuous hyperosmolar therapy for traumatic brain injury-induced cerebral edema: as good as it gets, or an iatrogenic secondary insult? J Clin Neurosci 20:30-31, 2013.
  • Continuous hypertonic saline therapy and the occurrence of complications in neurocritically ill patients. Crit Care Med 37(4):1433-1441, 2009. -> Letter to the editor Crit Care Med 37(8):2490-2491, 2009.
How to

How To Craft A Clinical Practice Guideline

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All US trauma centers verified by the American College of Surgeons are required to have clinical practice guidelines (CPG). Trauma centers around the world generally have them, but may not be required to by their designating authority. But don’t confuse a policy about clinical management, say for head injury, with a real CPG. Policies are generally broad statements about how you (are supposed to) do things, whereas a CPG is a specific set of rules you use when managing a specific patient problem.

  1. Look around; don’t reinvent the wheel! This is the first mistake nearly every center makes. It seems like most want to spend hours and hours combing through the literature, trying to synthesize it and come up with a CPG from scratch. Guess what? Hundreds of other centers have already done this! And many have posted theirs online for all to see and learn from. Take advantage of their generosity. Look at several. Find the one that comes closest to meeting your needs. Then “borrow” it.
  2. Review the newest literature. Any existing CPG should have been created using the most up to date literature at the time. But that could have been several years ago. Look for anything new (and significant) that may require a few tweaks to the existing CPG.
  3. Create your draft, customizing it to your hospital. Doing things exactly the same as another center doesn’t always make sense, and it may not be possible. Tweak the protocols to match your resources and local standards of care. But don’t stray too far off of what the literature tells you is right.
  4. Make sure it is actionable. It should not be a literature summary, or a bunch of wishy-washy statements saying you could do this or consider doing that. Your CPG should spell out exactly what to do and when. (see examples below)
  5. Create a concise flow diagram. The fewer boxes the better. This needs to be easy to follow and simple to understand. It must fit on one page!
  6. Get buy-in from all services involved. Don’t try to implement your CPG by fiat. Use your draft as a launching pad. Let everyone who will be involved with it have their say, and be prepared to make some minor modifications to get buy-in from as many people as possible.
  7. Educate everybody! Start a campaign to explain the rationale and details of your CPG to everyone: physicians, nurses, techs, etc. Give educational presentations. You don’t want the eventual implementation to surprise anyone. Your colleagues don’t like surprises and will be less likely to follow along.
  8. Roll it out. Create processes and a timeline to roll it out. Give everyone several months to get used to it.
  9. Now monitor it! It makes no sense to implement something that no one follows. Create a monitoring system using your PI program. Include it in your reports or dashboards so providers can see how they are doing. And if you really want participation, let providers see how they are doing compared to their colleagues. Everyone wants to be the top dog.

Some sample CPGs:

Pharmacy

DVT Prophylaxis At Home: Do Our Patients Do What They Are Told?

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Deep venous thrombosis (DVT) is a big potential problem for many trauma patients, particularly those with orthopedic injuries. Patients at high risk are frequently given a prophylaxis regimen to take home after discharge while they are still at higher risk for clots. The particular choice of medication typically comes down to oral (warfarin or aspirin) vs injectable (low molecular weight heparin (LMWH)).

There is quite a bit of literature on patient compliance with their medication routines, or should I say noncompliance? The group at ShockTrauma in Baltimore evaluated how well orthopedic surgery patients adhered to their prescribed DVT prophylaxis schedule after discharge.

They conducted a randomized, prospective trial on all patients who underwent operative management of extremity or pelvic fractures. These patients were prescribed either oral low dose aspirin (81mg) or subcutaneous injections of LMWH (30mg bid). All completed a standardized 8-question tool to gauge their compliance with the medication regimen. Nicely, a power analysis was performed to identify the minimum number of patients needed to achieve statistical significance ( 126 total patients).

Here are the factoids:

  • Of 1450 potential patients undergoing operative fracture fixation, 329 were eligible for the study. All but 150 were excluded primarily due to no need for prophylaxis or inability to contact.
  • Overall adherence to the prophylaxis plan was fairly high, with 65% of patients having high adherence, 21% medium, and 20% low.
  • A quarter of the LMWH patients felt “hassled” by their regimen, while only 9% of the aspirin group did
  • LMWH prophylaxis was associated with low or medium adherence
  • Having to self-administer the prophylactic agent, being a male, and young was also associated with lower compliance

Bottom line: Interesting study. And unfortunately it suggests that our patients don’t always do what they are told, especially if they have to stick themselves with needles. So they may not be getting the prophylaxis we think they are. Furthermore, we’re not even sure if aspirin (or LMWH for that matter) make a difference in the incidence of death or major pulmonary embolism in these patients.

There are a lot of opportunities for mayhem in this study. A third of the enrolled patients were not even compliant with completing the survey. This is certainly a source of bias, and most likely suggests that the overall compliance rates would have been even lower if they had. 

Keep in mind the risk factors for compliance (age, sex, drug route) when deciding how and what to provide for DVT prophylaxis. Your patient may not be doing what you assume they are!