TY - JOUR T1 - Prehospital shock index outperforms hypotension alone in predicting significant injury in trauma patients JF - Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open JO - Trauma Surg Acute Care Open DO - 10.1136/tsaco-2021-000712 VL - 6 IS - 1 SP - e000712 AU - Tareq Kheirbek AU - Thomas J Martin AU - Jessica Cao AU - Benjamin M Hall AU - Stephanie Lueckel AU - Charles A Adams Y1 - 2021/04/01 UR - http://tsaco.bmj.com/content/6/1/e000712.abstract N2 - Background The American College of Surgeons Resources for Optimal Care of the Injured Patient recommends using hypotension, defined as systolic blood pressure ≤90 mm Hg, as an indicator of a full team trauma activation. We hypothesized that an elevated shock index (SI) predicts significant traumatic injuries better than hypotension alone.Methods This is a retrospective cohort study analyzing full team trauma activations between February 2018 and January 2020, excluding transfers and those who had missing values for prehospital blood pressure or heart rate. We reviewed patients’ demographics, prehospital and emergency department vitals, injury pattern, need for operation, and clinical outcomes. The primary outcome was rate of significant injury defined as identified injured liver, spleen, or kidney, pelvis fracture, long bone fracture, significant extremity soft tissue damage, hemothorax, or pneumothorax.Results Among 544 patients, 82 (15.1%) had prehospital hypotension and 492 had normal blood pressure. Of the patients with prehospital hypotension, 34 (41.5%) had a significant injury. There was no difference in age, gender, medical history, or injury pattern between the two groups. There was no difference between the two groups in rate of serious injury (41.5% vs. 46.1%, NS), need for emergent operation (31.7% vs. 28.1%, NS) or death (20.7% vs. 18.8%, NS). On the other hand, SI ≥1 was associated with increased rate of serious injury (54.6% vs. 43.4%, p=0.04). On a logistic regression analysis, prehospital hypotension was not associated with significant injury or need for emergent operation (OR 0.83, 95% CI 0.51 to 1.33 and OR 1.32, 95% CI 0.79 to 2.25, respectively). SI ≥1 was associated with both increased odds of significant injury and need for emergent operation (OR 1.57, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.44 and OR 1.64, 95% CI 1.01 to 2.66).Discussion SI was a better indicator and could replace hypotension to better categorize and triage patients in need of higher level of care.Level of evidence Prognostic and epidemiologic, level III.Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available ER -