Category Archives: General

Sipping Alcohol And Later Substance Abuse In Teens

April 21, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

The legal drinking age in the US is 21. Yeah. But taking that first drink frequently happens well before that age. An interesting observation I have made is that the younger the age at which the first is taken, the more likely the individual is to have significant addiction problems later. I just read a paper that seems to quantify this phenomenon.

Over a thousand adolescents (6th through 8th grade) were already participating in a 3 year study of alcohol initiation and progression in the state of Rhode Island. A subset of these students were contacted and consented, and underwent a series of monthly and semiannual surveys. The goal was to see if alcohol use at the beginning of high school could be predicted based on earlier experience with it.

Here are the factoids:

30% of students admitted to sipping alcohol by the beginning of 6th grade
Nearly two thirds of these experiences occurred in children aged 7-10 (!!)
The first sip was usually wine (40%) or beer (35%)
The most common location was at home, and the provider was usually the mother (39%) or father (34%)
In 76% of cases, the beverage was intentionally offered
Students who sipped alcohol by 6th grade had significantly higher odds of consuming a full drink, getting drunk, and drinking heavily by 9th grade
When common factors were controlled for (temperament, behavior, environment), this association was still significant

Bottom line: Offering drinks to kids has a major impact on their future use of alcohol. Contrary to what some believe, supervising the use of alcohol at home does not protect against future problems. Conversely, it may be creating more problems. The incidence of risky behaviors and other drug use in the “sippers” was significantly higher. And exposing the young brain to the abnormal reward stimuli from alcohol use may put them at risk for even more severe problems as they grow older.

Related posts:

Reference: The prospective association between sipping alcohol by the sixth grade and later substance use. J Studies Alcohol Drugs 76:212-221, 2015.

General

In-House Trauma Attendings: A New Financial Benefit for Hospitals?

April 20, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Many trauma hospitals provide in-house trauma attendings to improve the timeliness of care and to provide housestaff supervision. In many centers, this is required in order to meet the surgeon response requirements for trauma activations. Frequently, this involves some expense for the hospital if they provide an on-call stipend. A study in the Journal of Trauma examined the financial impact housing the surgeons in the hospital at an urban Level I trauma center.

Bellevue Hospital in New York City implemented an in-house attending policy in October of 2007. The study looked at the year prior to and the year after implementation. It focused primarily on the number of operative cases performed during nights and on weekends. The biggest changed noted was a four-fold increase in the number of cholecystectomies performed and 1.2 day decrease in the length of stay for those patients.

Using several financial approximations, they concluded that the hospital received an increased revenue of $854K, while the in-house attending program cost the hospital $750K during the year. The study raises a number of questions, though. The average length of stay, even after in-house attending presence, was 5 days! It would seem that additional savings could be accrued by working on LOS for these patients, as well as other surgical groups. There were other procedures that were done at night that were not analyzed, so there are probably more benefits to be accrued.

The downside of the in-house attendings performing these acute care surgery cases was that their availability for incoming trauma patients was reduced. There were also questions about the possibility of errors when performing surgery at 4AM.

Bottom line: This study shows evidence that there is a financial benefit to having an in-house surgeon. This will be important to hospital administrators who must grapple with the cost of moving to this type of coverage. However, higher quality financial research of this type is also needed.

Reference: In-house trauma attendings: A new financial benefit for hospitals. Pachter, Simon et al. J Trauma 2010;68(5) 1032-1037.

General

What A MESS! Part 2

April 17, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

The trauma season is officially open in Minnesota. Motorcycles are out on the (still) sanded roads, and cars are once again driving too fast. It’s also the season for crash victims to come to us with mangled extremities.

In days of old, management was simple: take it off. But we’ve become wiser over the years and are now able to salvage a good number of these threatened limbs. The Mangled Extremity Severity Score (MESS) has helped greatly with this.

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s beginnings were humble, almost looking like guesswork on the part of the authors. But this system has withstood the test of time.

There are four components to MESS: limb ischemia, patient age, presence of shock, and mechanism of injury. Each component is assigned an integer value depending on severity. The possible values range from 1 to 14. Here’s the breakdown of each component:

Ischemia

+1 Reduced pulse but normal perfusion
+2 Pulseless, paresthetic, reduced capillary refill
+3 Cool, paralyzed, insensate
Add 3 points if limb ischemia has been present more than 6 hours

Age

+0 <30 years
+1 30-50 years
+2 >50 years

Shock

+0 SBP >90 consistently
+1 Transient hypotension
+2 Persistent hypotension

Mechanism (kinetic energy)

+1 Low (stab, gunshot, simple fracture)
+2 Medium (dislocation, open or multiple fractures)
+3 High (high speed MVC, rifle)
+4 Very high (high energy trauma with gross contamination)

Per the original study, values of 7 or greater predict low salvageability. However, with advancing technology, drugs, and operative techniques, the threshold has been creeping higher. But not that much higher, probably 8 or so.

Bottom line: Use the MESS score as one tool in your armamentarium to help address mangled extremities. But remember, it is not the final answer. In the OR, confer with your orthopedic and vascular colleagues. Decide if immediate amputation is necessary, or whether a second look in a day or two is in order. Use MESS as a tiebreaker. But remember, don’t let your desire to save the extremity jeopardize your patient’s life (rhabdomyolysis, renal failure, acidosis). If systemic signs begin to occur, cut your (and their) losses and amputate!

Related post:

History of the MESS score

General

What A MESS! Part 1

April 16, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

The Mangled Extremity Severity Score (MESS) is now 25 years old, and it still serves us fairly well. This simple system helps predict salvageability of mangled extremities. Obviously, the acronym was chosen to help describe the clinical problem.

The system was originated at the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. The development was not very scientific; the authors put their heads together and made a list of the four things that they observed predicted limb salvage:

Degree of skeletal and soft tissue injury
Presence of limb ischemia
Presence of shock
Age

The system was used retrospectively in a group of 25 patients(!) and the authors found a nice breakpoint at 7. Any mangled extremities with a MESS of 7 or more required amputation. They then applied this to 26 patients prospectively(!) and got the same result.

As you can see, the numbers were small, and there was no followup information. Nevertheless, MESS still stands today, and the critical MESS score has not changed much. It has been validated by a number of other studies during the past 20 years. It is conceivable that the critical score will slowly creep upward with advancements in flap coverage and surgical technique, but it hasn’t done so yet.

Tomorrow, I’ll show you how to calculate the MESS score, and give some tips on how to use it.

Reference: Objective Criteria Accurately Predict Amputation Following Lower Extremity Trauma. Johansen, et al. J Trauma 30(5): 568, 1990.

General

What The Heck? Final Answer

April 14, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

So what is going on with your dyspneic patient after partial ejection from their car? They are not responding to your interventions as they should How is he immune to chest tube placement?

Well, you could intubate the patient. But the x-ray will be available momentarily, and may guide you along a different path. It might even obviate the need for intubation. So while you are getting your meds ready (just in case), this image comes up:

The chest tube is in good position, but the stomach is not!

The reason your patient didn’t respond to the chest tube is that they have a traumatic rupture of the diaphragm with the stomach in the chest. It is compressing a good portion of the left lung, leading to dyspnea and poor oxygen saturation.

Rapidly place a nasogastric tube to try to decompress the stomach. It doesn’t always work because the angles at the hiatus are not what they usually are. But if it does, the patient will feel better immediately. You may be able to avoid intubating them… for a few minutes. This is a surgical problem, and commonly involves injury to other abdominal structures, especially the spleen. Order up some blood, and rapidly complete your evaluation. A pelvis x-ray is in order, because fractures are common after full or partial ejection through the window. No other imaging is necessary. The send your patient off to the OR for a thorough exploration and repair. Now you can intubate.

I’ve seen this injury three times after partial ejection, and always involving the driver (left side, makes sense). Any time you have left sided abnormalities after blunt trauma that don’t respond to a chest tube, think about this problem.

What The Heck? The original presentation

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