Citation

Periyanayagam U, Crandall M. Am. J. Surg. 2014; 208(1): 130-135.

Affiliation

Department of Surgery, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, 676 North St Clair, Suite 650, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. Electronic address: mcrandall@northwestern.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.amjsurg.2013.10.018

PMID

24530040

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Traumatic injuries during pregnancy are the leading cause of nonobstetric maternal mortality. We aimed to determine hospital charges for trauma activations during pregnancy. METHODS: We used the Illinois State Trauma Registry data from 1999 to 2003. Using STATA for bivariate and regression analyses, we compared total hospital costs for women more than 24 weeks pregnant with nonpregnant women. RESULTS: Six hundred thirty-five pregnant women (2.4% of 26,806 female trauma patients) were admitted during the study period. In multivariate regression, pregnancy was associated with lower hospital charges; however, for any given length of stay, pregnancy increased hospital charges (α = $17,864.80, P = .001). Pregnancy also independently predicted increased length of stay for similar injury severity. CONCLUSIONS: When controlling for injury severity, pregnancy independently predicted an increased duration of hospitalization and hospital charges. These findings have important implications for resource allocation and care of trauma in pregnancy.

Language: en