Trauma patients in the intensive care unit: short- and long-term survival and predictors of 30-day mortality

BACKGROUND: The aims of this cohort study were to assess the survival of trauma patients treated in a general intensive care unit (ICU) and to evaluate the simplified acute physiology score (SAPS) II, maximum sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA) score, injury severity score (ISS), age, sex and severe head injury as predictors of 30-day mortality. METHODS: Three hundred and twenty-five adult patients admitted during 1998-2003 were evaluated retrospectively with update of survival data in January 2005. Kaplan-Meier statistics and Cox proportional hazards regression were used to study survival and to assess predictors of mortality, respectively. RESULTS: The 30-day mortality was 16.9%, ICU mortality 13.8% and hospital mortality 17.8%. Long-term survival (observation time, 1-7 years) was 77.8%. After 3.5 years, mortality was the same as for the background population. Severe head injury was the main cause of death and increased the risk of 30-day mortality 2.4-fold. In addition, SAPS II and an age above 50 years proved to be significant predictors of mortality in a multivariate analysis. Sex was not associated with mortality, and ISS and the maximum SOFA score were significant predictors in univariate analyses only. CONCLUSION: Reduced long-term survival was observed up to 3.5 years after acute injury. The 30-day mortality was strongly related to severe head injury, SAPS II and an age above 50 years. These variables may be useful as predictors of mortality, and may contribute to risk adjustment of this subset of trauma patients when treatment results from different centres are compared.