Category Archives: General

Missed Injury / Delayed Diagnosis

February 25, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Missed injuries (or delayed diagnosis in polite conversation) are the bane of any trauma program.Trauma professionals want to know that they’ve identified all significant injuries in their patients so no future harm will occur due to them.

But what exactly is a missed injury? The definitions tend to vary a bit, which is why their incidence varies so widely in the literature (1 – 39%). The simplest way to describe one is any injury that is identified after a set amount of time. But what is a reasonable time frame? Some define it as the time spent in the emergency department (highest incidence). Others count any injury found after a predetermined period of time (typically 24-48 hours). Some use even longer time intervals, so they obviously look the best and have the lowest incidence.

And what are the factors that contribute to us “missing” these injuries? As you can imagine, there are quite a few, but they boil down to two major categories:

Inadequate diagnostic technique (physical exam and/or technology) – I can’t see it
Inadequate recognition – I didn’t think of it

A good physical exam with the focused use of appropriate imaging is paramount. Sure, you could use a shotgun approach and just scan everything. The problem is that CT scans have limitations, but we tend to forget that. So we believe that if we don’t see anything on scan, it must not exist. Wrong! The physical exam may pick up suspicious findings that tell the clinician that a specialized study is necessary to rule a potential injury out.

The failure to recognize that an injury is present can occur with everyone that “touches” the patient. The EMT or physician may not appreciate a subtle injury. The radiologist may miss a problem on the images they read. The surgeon might even fail to notice another injury separate from the one she is operating for. Obviously, experience plays a large part in this factor. Students will fail to appreciate a potential injury that a senior clinician will detect rapidly.

What to do about it? Tomorrow, I’ll review a recent paper that tries to correlate missed injuries with time of admission. And on Friday, I’ll discuss some strategies to try to help keep it from happening to you.

General

First, Read The Paper. THEN THINK ABOUT IT!

February 20, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

This is a perfect example of why you cannot just simply read an abstract. And in this case, you can’t just read the paper, either. You’ve got to critically think about it and see if the conclusions are reasonable. And if they are not, then you need to go back and try to figure out why it isn’t.

A study was recently published regarding bleeding after nonoperative management of splenic injury. The authors have been performing an early followup CT within 48 hours of admission for more than 12 years(!). They wrote this paper comparing their recent experience with a time interval before they implemented the practice.

Here are the factoids. Pay attention closely:

773 adult patients were retrospectively studied from 1995 to 2012
Of 157 studied from 1995 to 1999, 83 (53%) were stable and treated nonoperatively. Ten failed, and all the rest underwent repeat CT after 7 days.
After a “sentinel delayed splenic rupture event”, the protocol was revised, and a repeat CT was performed in all patients at 48 hours. Pseudoaneurysm or extravasation initially or after repeat scan prompted a trip to interventional radiology.
Of 616 studied from 2000-2012, after the protocol change, 475 (77%) were stable and treated nonoperatively. Three failed, and it is unclear whether this happened before or after the repeat CT at 48 hours.
22 high risk lesions were found after the first scan, and 29 were found after the repeat. 20% of these were seen in Grade 1 and 2 injuries. All were sent for angiography.
There were 4 complications of angiography (8%), with one requiring splenectomy.
Length of stay decreased from 8 days to 6.

So it sounds like we should be doing repeat CT in all of our nonoperatively managed spleens, right? The failure rate decreased from 12% to less than 1%. Time in the hospital decreased significantly as well.

Wrong! Here are the problems/questions:

Why were so many of their patients considered “unstable” and taken straight to OR (47% and 23%)?
CT sensitivity for detecting high risk lesions in the 1990s was nothing like it is today.
The accepted success rate for nonop management is about 95%, give or take. The 99.4% in this study suggests that some patients ended up going to OR who didn’t really need to, making this number look artificially high.
The authors did not separate pseudoaneurysm from extravasation on CT. And they found them in Grade 1 and 2 injuries, which essentially never fail
472 people got an extra CT scan
4 people (8%) had complications from angiography, which is higher than the oft-cited 2-3%. And one lost his spleen because of it.
Is a 6 day hospital stay reasonable or necessary?

Bottom line: This paper illustrates two things:

If you look at your data without the context of what others have done, you can’t tell if it’s an outlier or not; and
It’s interesting what reflexively reacting to a single adverse event can make us do.

The entire protocol is based on one bad experience at this hospital in 1999. Since then, a substantial number of people have been subjected to additional radiation and the possibility of harm in the interventional suite. How can so many other trauma centers use only a single CT scan and have excellent results?

At Regions Hospital, we see in excess of 100 spleen injuries per year. A small percentage are truly unstable and go immediately to OR. About 97% of the remaining stable patients are successfully managed nonoperatively, and only one or two return annually with delayed bleeding. It is seldom immediately life-threatening, especially if the patient has been informed about clinical signs and symptoms they should be looking for. And our average length of stay is 2-3 days depending on grade.

Never read just the abstract. Take the rest of the manuscript with a grain of salt. And think!

Reference: Delayed hemorrhagic complications in the nonoperative management of blunt splenic trauma: early screening leads to a decrease in failure rate. J Trauma 76(6):1349-1353, 2014.

General

How To Read A Stab Wound

February 19, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Most emergency departments do not see much penetrating trauma. But it is helpful to be able to learn as much as possible from the appearance of these piercing injuries when you do see them. This post will describe the basics of reading stab wounds.

Important: This information will allow some basic interpretation of wounds. It will not qualify you as a forensics expert by any means. I do not recommend that you document any of this information in the medical record unless you have specific forensic training. You should only write things like “a wound was noted in the midepigastrium that is 2 cm in length.” Your note can and will be used in a court of law, and if you are wrong there can be significant consequences for the plaintiff or the defendant. This information is for your edification only.

1. What is the length of the wound? This does not necessarily correspond to the width of the blade. Skin stretches as it is cut, so the wound will usually retract to a length that is shorter than the full width of the blade.

2. Is the item sharp on one side or both? This can usually be determined by the appearance of the wound. A linear wound with two sharp ends is generally a two sided knife. A wound with one flat end and one sharp end is usually from a one-sided weapon. The picture below shows a knife wound with one sharp side.

3. Is there a hilt mark? This can usually be detected by looking for bruising around the wound. The picture below shows a knife wound with a hilt mark.

4. What is the angle? If both edges are symmetric, the knife went straight in. If one surface has a tangential appearance, then the knife was angled toward that side. You can approximate the direction of entry by looking at the tangential surface of the wound edge. In this example, the blade is angling upward toward the right.

5. How deep did it go? You have no way of knowing unless you have the blood stained blade in your possession. And yes, it is possible for the wound to go deeper than the length of the knife, since the abdominal wall or other soft tissues can be pushed inwards during the stab.

General

Why Did The Trauma Team Cut Off My Clothes?

February 18, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

The fifth highest priority taught in the ATLS course is exposure. This generally means getting the patient’s clothes off so any hidden injuries can be identified. Early in my career, I was called to see a patient who had a gunshot to the chest that had been missed because the consulting physician had neglected to cut off her bra. A small caliber wound was found under the elastic strap in her left anterior axillary line after a chest xray showed a bullet in mid-thorax.

The usual trauma activation routine is to cut off the clothes. There are several tips and tricks we use to do this quickly. And a number of commercial products are out there to make it even easier.

But do we really need to cut everyone’s clothes off? I’m not disputing the fact that it’s important to be able to examine every square inch. But do we need to destroy everything our patient is wearing? I once saw a sequined wedding dress cut off (it’s almost as bad as cutting off a down jacket).

The answer is no. The key concept here is patient safety. Can you safely remove the clothing in a less destructive way? For most victims of major blunt trauma, we worry a lot about the spine. Unfortunately, it’s just not possible to allow the patient to wriggle out of their clothes and protect their spine. The same goes for fractures; it may be too uncomfortable to remove clothing because of fracture movement so scissors are required.

Penetrating trauma is a bit different, and in many cases it’s a good idea to try to get the clothing off intact. Once again, if spinal injury is a consideration (gunshots only), the involved clothes should be cut off. A patient with a gunshot to the chest can probably have their pants safely and gently pulled off, but their shirt and coat must be cut.

The police forensic investigators like to have intact clothing, if possible. This is another good reason to try to remove clothing from penetrating injury victims without cutting.

Bottom line: Think before you cut clothes! Major blunt trauma and bad injuries require scissors. Lesser energy blunt injury may allow some pieces of clothing to be removed in the usual method. Most penetrating injury does not require cutting. But if you must (for patient safety), avoid any holes in the fabric so forensics experts can do their job.

General

How Good Is The Spine Exam In Penetrating Injury?

February 17, 2015 The Trauma Pro Leave a comment

Examination of the spine in trauma patients is typically not very helpful. We always look for stepoffs. swelling and tenderness, but the correlation with actual injury is poor. A recent paper presented at the American Medical Student Association Annual Convention showed that it actually can be helpful in victims of penetrating injury.

A prospective study of 282 patients was carried out at a Level I Trauma Center, specifically focusing on penetrating trauma. Half had gunshot wounds, and 8% sustained spinal injury with one third left with permanent disability. Stab wounds never led to a spinal cord injury. The most common patterns for cord injury in gunshot wounds was a single shot to the head or neck, or multiple shots to the torso.

The examiners looked for pain, tenderness, deformity and neurologic deficit. They found that the sensitivity was 67%, the specificity was 90%, the positive predictive value was 95% and the negative predictive value was 46%. These numbers are much better than those found during spine examination after blunt trauma. They also determined that prehospital immobilization after penetrating injury would not have helped, which I have also written about here.

Bottom line: A good spine exam in victims of penetrating trauma can accelerate definitive management prior to defining the exact details of the injury with radiographic or MRI imaging. This is particularly helpful in patients who present to non-trauma centers, where imaging or image interpretation may not be readily available.

Reference: American Medical Student Association (AMSA) 60th Annual Convention: Abstract 26: Presented March 11, 2010

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