Category Archives: Complications

Complications Of Iliac Artery Embolization

The main cause of mortality in patients with severe pelvic fractures is major hemorrhage. Over the years, trauma professionals have developed and tested a number of maneuvers to reduce mortality in these patients. These include wrapping or fixing the pelvis, embolization, and more recently, pre-peritoneal packing and REBOA.

Pelvic wrap/fixation and embolization have been around for a long, long time. For both, it’s been long enough so that we should have a fairly decent appreciation of the complications. For pelvic binders, they principally involve the skin. But aside for the potential access site complications (bleeding, pseudoaneurysm), angiography has been thought to be relatively benign.

But as with any medical procedure, especially invasive ones, there are risks. A paper published five years ago retrospectively reviewed the 13 year experience with pelvic angiography at UC Davis. Study patients were matched with controls who underwent angiography for pelvic fracture but not embolization. Short-term (within 30 days) and long-term complications were assessed while in hospital and by telephone survey. Mean followup time was 18 months.

Here are the factoids:

  • There were no differences in complications attributable to embolization within 30 days of the procedure
  • There were 5 cases of short-term skin sloughing or necrosis in 55 patients, and 4 of 5 occurred in patients with nonselective embolization. However, this was not a statistically significant complication.
  • Long-term complications such as buttock claudication or skin ulceration, pain, and impotence were not significantly different in embolized vs non-embolized patients
  • There was a significantly increased incidence of buttock, perineal, or thigh paresthesias in the long-term

Bottom line: Angiography with embolization is a very valuable tool in the management of complication pelvic fractures. Remember that a number of complications have been described:

  • Skin sloughing or necrosis
  • Buttock claudication, pain, paresthesias
  • Skin ulceration
  • Impotence

Other than an increase in paresthesias in the long-term, there did not appear that there was any difference in patients undergoing angiography with and without embolization. Although the numbers were small (100 patients total), this is the best study we have to date. Just keep in mind that complications are possible, and question your patients about them when they present for their followup visits.

Reference: Evaluation of Short-term and Long-term Complications after Emergent Internal Iliac Artery Embolization in Patients with Pelvic Trauma. J Vascular Interventional Rad 19(6):840-847, 2008.

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Keeping Patients Warm In Your Trauma Bay

Hypothermia is the enemy of all trauma patients. It takes their potential bleeding problems and makes them exponentially worse. From the time you strip off their clothes in the trauma resuscitation room, they begin to cool down. And if you live in Minnesota like me (or some similar fun place), they start chilling even before that.

What can you do in the trauma bay to help avoid this potential complication? Here are some of the possibilities, and what I think of them. And I’ll also provide a practical tip to help keep your patient warm  while you can still do a full exam.

Outside

– Warming lights in the ambulance unloading area. I know lots of people look at this area and recommend them. Unfortunately, they don’t do a lot. Consider that your patient will move through this space quickly. While it may be cold, they’ll only spend a minute or so getting to the back door to the ED.

– How about the path from the helipad? If this is mostly outside, it can be a problem. If it’s wide open, there aren’t really a lot of options. Cover and heat it? Lots of $$$. Typically, flight crews working in winter climates have bundled up their patient very well, and this is the patient’s primary source of protection from the elements. If the pad is far away from the ED, consider a fancy golf cart to move them quickly, and perhaps get an even fancier one that has a heated enclosure.

Inside

– Heat the room! This only works on a moment’s notice if you have a smaller room or a really good heating system. Otherwise, you must keep it cranked it up at all times.

– Close the door! You will not be able to keep the room toasty unless you make sure the door is closed as much as possible. No doors? Then consider the next tips.

– Use radiant heating systems. Some EDs have lights in the ceiling, others have portable units that can be rolled over to your patient.

– Use hot fluids, especially in the winter. At a minimum, all blood products must be administered through a warmer, since they are only a few degrees above freezing. If it’s winter outside, or your patient is already cool, give all IV fluids through the warmer, too.

– Cover your patient. Keep a blanket warmer nearby, and pull several out at the beginning of each resuscitation.

– What about those fancy air blankets? Unfortunately, they are unwieldy. They’re all one piece, they try to fall of the patient all the time, and they limit access for your exam. But there is a solution!

Here’s a clever way to deal with this problem. Use my two-blanket trick. Don’t use just one warm sheet or blanket. Use two! Fold each one in half, so they are each half-length. Place one on the top half of the patient, the other at the bottom, overlapping slightly at the waist. Your whole patient is now covered and toasty. If you need to look at an extremity, fold the blanket that covers it over from right to left (or left to right) to uncover just the area of interest. To insert a urinary catheter, just open the area at the waist, moving the top sheet up a little, the bottom down a little. Voila!

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The Final X-Ray In Damage Control Surgery

Damage control surgery for trauma is over 20 years old, yet we continue to find ways to refine it and make it better. Many lives have been saved over the years, but we’ve also discovered new questions. How soon should the patient go back for definitive closure? What is the optimal closure technique? What if it still won’t close?

One other troublesome issue surfaced as well. We discovered that it is entirely possible to leave things behind. Retained foreign bodies are the bane of any surgeon, and many, many systems are in place to avoid them. However, many of these processes are not possible in emergent trauma surgery. Preop instrument counts cannot be done. Handfuls of uncounted sponges may be packed into the wound.

I was only able to find one paper describing how often things are left behind in damage control surgery (see reference below), and it was uncommon in this single center study (3 cases out of about 2500 patients). However, it can be catastrophic, causing sepsis, physical damage to adjacent organs, and the risk of performing an additional operation in a sick trauma patient.

So what can we do to reduce the risk, hopefully to zero? Here are my  recommendations:

  • For busy centers that do frequent laparotomy or thoracotomy for trauma and have packs open and ready, pre-count all instruments and document it
  • Pre-count a set number of laparotomy pads into the packs
  • Use only items that are radiopaque or have a marker embedded in them. This includes surgical towels, too!
  • Implement a damage control closure x-ray policy. When the patient returns to OR and the surgeons are ready to begin the final closure, obtain an x-ray of the entire area that was operated upon. This must be performed and read before the closure is complete so that any identified retained objects can be removed.

Tomorrow, a sample damage control closure x-ray.

Related post:

Reference: Retained foreign bodies after emergent trauma surgery: incidence after 2526 cavitary explorations. Am Surg 73(10):1031-1034, 2007.

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The Final X-Ray In Damage Control Surgery

Damage control surgery for trauma is over 20 years old, yet we continue to find ways to refine it and make it better. Many lives have been saved over the years, but we’ve also discovered new questions. How soon should the patient go back for definitive closure? What is the optimal closure technique? What if it still won’t close?

One other troublesome issue surfaced as well. We discovered that it is entirely possible to leave things behind. Retained foreign bodies are the bane of any surgeon, and many, many systems are in place to avoid them. However, many of these processes are not possible in emergent trauma surgery. Preop instrument counts cannot be done. Handfuls of uncounted sponges may be packed into the wound.

I was only able to find one paper describing how often things are left behind in damage control surgery (see reference below), and it was uncommon in this single center study (3 cases out of about 2500 patients). However, it can be catastrophic, causing sepsis, physical damage to adjacent organs, and the risk of performing an additional operation in a sick trauma patient.

So what can we do to reduce the risk, hopefully to zero? Here are my  recommendations:

  • For busy centers that do frequent laparotomy or thoracotomy for trauma and have packs open and ready, pre-count all instruments and document it
  • Pre-count a set number of laparotomy pads into the packs
  • Use only items that are radiopaque or have a marker embedded in them. This includes surgical towels, too!
  • Implement a damage control closure x-ray policy. When the patient returns to OR and the surgeons are ready to begin the final closure, obtain an x-ray of the entire area that was operated upon. This must be performed and read before the closure is complete so that any identified retained objects can be removed.

Tomorrow, a sample damage control closure x-ray.

Related post:

Reference: Retained foreign bodies after emergent trauma surgery: incidence after 2526 cavitary explorations. Am Surg 73(10):1031-1034, 2007.

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Natural History of the Splenic Blush

In my last post, I described the two types of solid organ “blushes.” I also described my thoughts on the natural history of these findings. Now, a multicenter study on the natural progression of the splenic “blush” has just been published. I found this paper very interesting, because it challenged some of my own existing beliefs. But once I read it, my enthusiasm faded.

The Western Trauma Association sponsored a multicenter (17 Level I and II centers) review of data collected prospectively over an unspecified period of time. Patients were excluded if their injury was older than 24 hours, if they had a previous splenic injury, and if they had any number of diseases or hereditary conditions that might affect the spleen. Strict definitions of nonbleeding and actively bleeding injuries were applied, and detailed information on intervention and outcomes was collected.

Here are the factoids:

  • 200 patients were enrolled from 17 centers, but the paper does not state how long that took
  • 20% were low grade (1 or 2) and 80 % high grade (3-5)
  • 29% had a pseudoaneurysm, and 83% showed extravasation, which means that several patients had both
  • 15% underwent early splenectomy, 59% underwent angiography, and 26% were observed
  • For those with initial angiography, 6% had repeat angio and 7% eventually underwent splenectomy
  • Of those were were initially observed, 9% had delayed angio and 8% underwent splenectomy
  • Based on a read by an expert radiologist, an actively bleeding injury was associated with a 41% splenectomy rate
  • The authors conclude that the majority of patients with spleen injury with pseudoaneurysm or extravasation are managed with angio and embolization and that splenectomy remains a rare event (??)

Bottom line: This paper just doesn’t do it for me. The biggest problem is that it is what I call a “we do it the way we do it” study. It examines how 17 different centers evaluate and treat patients with significant splenic injury. There was no guidance or guideline on how to treat, so they each did it their way. And the number of patients was small.

They don’t tell us anything about the use or effectiveness of angio by grade. Or whether the specific hospitals routinely rely on angio rather than just going to the OR for high grade injuries (typically if angio response times are long).

Unfortunately, this paper gives the appearance of containing a lot of interesting stuff. But a 15% initial splenectomy rate is not a “rare event” in my book. Everything published here is at odds with what I’ve observed over the years for centers with well developed management guidelines and easy access to angio (< 5% splenectomy rate in hemodynamically stable patients with nonoperative management).

My recommendation is to send all stable patients with pseudoaneursym and/or extravasation to angio immediately! Yes, some will have nothing found by the time they get to angio, and you’ll have to come up with a plan at that point. But most have something wrong, and it won’t stop until it’s been plugged up (or your patient bleeds to death, whichever comes first)!

This article has all the right buzzwords: multicenter, prospective data, etc. But it’s already been moved to my recycle bin. 

Related post:

Reference: Natural history of splenic vascular abnormalities after blunt injury: A Western Trauma Association multicenter trial. J Trauma 83(6):999-1005, 2017.

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