Injury
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Hemorrhage is a leading cause of death among trauma patients, and is the most common cause of preventable death after trauma. Since the advent of blood component fractioning, most patients receive blood components rather than whole blood (WB). WB contains all of the individual blood components and has the advantages of simplifying resuscitation logistics, providing physiological ratios of components, reducing preservative volumes and allowing transfusion of younger red blood cells (RBC). Successful experience with fresh whole blood (FWB) by the US military is well documented. In the civilian setting, transfusion of cold-stored low titer type O whole blood (LTOWB) was shown to be safe. Reports of WB are limited by small numbers and low transfusion volumes. ⋯ WB was not associated with a significant survival benefit or reduced blood product utilization. Nonetheless, it seems that the use of LTOWB is safe and might carry a significant logistic benefit. The quality of the existing data is poor and further high quality studies are required.
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Multicenter Study
Prognostic factors and long-term outcomes of eye-globe perforation: Eye injury vitrectomy study.
To delineate anatomic and visual outcomes of injured eye globes with perforating, and to develop the prognostic indicators for perforating eyes. ⋯ The injured eyes with perforation can be saved through vitreoretinal surgery, the PVR-C, retinectomy more than 2 times of optic disk, and macular damage were independent risk factors for poor long-term prognosis.
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Early hospital discharge following non-operative management of blunt liver and splenic trauma: A pilot randomized controlled trial.
Despite the acceptance of non-operative management (NOM), there is no consensus on the optimal length of hospital stay in patients with blunt liver and splenic injury (BLSI). Recent studies on pediatric patients have demonstrated the safety of early discharge following NOM for BLSI. We aimed at evaluating the feasibility and safety of early discharge in adult patients with BLSI following NOM in a randomized controlled trial. ⋯ Adult patients undergoing NOM for BLSI can be safely discharged after 48 h of in-hospital observation, provided other injuries precluding discharge do not exist.
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Thirty-day in-hospital mortality is a common outcome measure in trauma-registry research and benchmarking. However, this does not include deaths after hospital discharge before 30 days or late deaths beyond 30 days since the injury. To evaluate the reliability of this outcome measure, we assessed the timing and causes of death during the first year after major blunt trauma in patients treated at a single tertiary trauma center. ⋯ Thirty-day mortality is a proper outcome that measures survival after severe blunt trauma. However, applying only in-hospital mortality instead of actual 30-day mortality may exclude non-survivors who die at another facility before day 30. This could result in over-optimistic benchmarking results. On the other hand, extending the follow-up period beyond 30 days increases the rate of non-traumatic deaths. By combining data from different registries, it is possible to address this challenge in current trauma-registry research caused by lack of follow up.
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To evaluate hip fracture patients´ views on content validity and feasibility of four commonly used generic measures of health-related quality of life (HRQOL). ⋯ Although patients reported problems with all instruments, we suggest the EQ-5D or SF-12, as these appear to have the fewest limitations in content validity and feasibility from the patient´s perspective.