Citation

MacDonald SL, Robinson LR. Am. J. Phys. Med. Rehabil. 2019; 98(2): 165-168.

Affiliation

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins)

DOI

10.1097/PHM.0000000000001021

PMID

30124492

Abstract

The objective of this study was to describe the incidence of complications in trauma patients that could be prevented, diagnosed, and / or managed by a consulting acute care physiatrist.Demographic and complication data were extracted by chart review of adult trauma patients admitted to a Canadian academic trauma center. Subjects were included if they had a diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, and / or multiple injuries resulting in an Injury Severity Score > 15. Means and standard deviations were calculated for continuous variables and frequencies for categorical data. Secondary analyses involved using Spearman's rho and Chi-Square analysis to examine relationships between the development of complications and various patient factors. A total of 286 individuals were included. The overall incidence of a PM&R-relevant complication was 32.9%. The complications with the highest incidence were pneumonia (15.5%), delirium (14.1%), and urinary tract infection (13.4%). Secondary analyses demonstrated associations between the development of complications with older age, the presence of co-morbidities, having both a traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury, and length of stay. This study demonstrated that trauma patients may experience multiple complications that are of relevance to the consulting physiatrist.

Language: en