Pain management for blunt thoracic trauma: A joint practice management guideline from the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma and Trauma Anesthesiology Society.

INTRODUCTION: Thoracic trauma is the second most prevalent nonintentional injury in the United States and is associated with significant morbidity. Analgesia for blunt thoracic trauma was first addressed by the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma (EAST) with a practice management guideline published in 2005. Since that time, it was hypothesized that there have been advances in the analgesic management for blunt thoracic trauma. As a result, updated guidelines for this topic using the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation) framework recently adopted by EAST are presented. METHODS: Five systematic reviews were conducted using multiple databases. The search retrieved articles regarding analgesia for blunt thoracic trauma from January1967 to August 2015. Critical outcomes of interest were analgesia, postoperative pulmonary complications, changes in pulmonary function tests, need for endotracheal intubation, and mortality. Important outcomes of interest examined included hospital and intensive care unit length of stay. RESULTS: Seventy articles were identified. Of these, 28 articles were selected to construct the guidelines. The overall risk of bias for all studies was high. The majority of included studies examined epidural analgesia. Epidural analgesia was associated with lower short-term pain scores in most studies, but the quality and quantity of evidence were very low, and no firm evidence of benefit or harm was found when this modality was compared with other analgesic interventions. The quality of evidence for paravertebral block, intrapleural analgesia, multimodal analgesia, and intercostal nerve blocks was very low as assessed by GRADE. The limitations with the available literature precluded the formulation of strong recommendations by our panel. CONCLUSION: We propose two evidence-based recommendations regarding analgesia for patients with blunt thoracic trauma. The overall risk of bias for all studies was high. The limitations with the available literature precluded the formulation of strong recommendations by our panel. We conditionally recommend epidural analgesia and multimodal analgesia as options for patients with blunt thoracic trauma, but the overall quality of evidence supporting these modalities is low in trauma patients. These recommendations are based on very low-quality evidence but place a high value on patient preferences for analgesia. These recommendations are in contradistinction to the previously published Practice Management Guideline published by EAST.

Adult respiratory distress syndrome risk factors for injured patients undergoing damage-control laparotomy: AAST multicenter post hoc analysis.

BACKGROUND: Severely injured patients undergoing damage-control laparotomy (DCL) have multiple risk factors for adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), making it challenging to differentiate the contributions of individual causative factors. We aimed to determine the relative contributions of ARDS risk factors. METHODS: Analysis of the prospectively collected American Association for the Surgery of Trauma Multi-institutional Open Abdomen Database was performed. Inclusion criteria were any patient, 18 years or older, undergoing DCL at 1 of 14 participating Level I trauma centers. Univariable and multivariable Cox regression analyses were performed to determine the association of variables with the development of ARDS during hospitalization. RESULTS: A total of 563 patients (78% men; mean [SD] age, 40 [18] years) were identified, of whom 77 developed ARDS (14%). Overall mortality was 23%, with a 39% mortality rate for ARDS patients. Univariable analysis demonstrated that Injury Severity Score (ISS, 1.03; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.02-1.05), intraoperative (IO) estimated blood loss (hazard ratio [HR], 1.09; 95% CI, 1.04-1.13), IO plasma transfusion (HR, 1.17; 95% CI, 1.10-1.25), 24-hour colloid volume (HR, 1.07; 95% CI, 1.04-1.10), and 24-hour crystalloid volume (HR, 1.01; 95% CI, 1.00-1.01) were associated with the development of ARDS. Cox multivariable analysis demonstrated that ISS, IO plasma transfusions, and total fluid balance through 23 hours all increased the risk of ARDS development. CONCLUSION: Severity of injury, plasma transfusions, and greater fluid administration by 24 hours were independently associated with ARDS development. Judicious use of plasma and other fluids may reduce rates of ARDS in this critically injured population. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Prognostic study, level III; therapeutic study, level IV.