Impact of flail chest injury on morbidity and outcome: ten years' experience at a tertiary care hospital in a developing country

BACKGROUND

One of the worst types of severe chest injuries seen by clinicians is flail chest. This study aims to measure the overall mortality rate among flail chest patients and then to correlate mortality with several demographic, pathologic, and management factors.

METHODOLOGY

A retrospective observational study tracked a total of 376 flail chest patients admitted to the emergency intensive care unit (EICU) and surgical intensive care unit (SICU) at Zagazig University over 120 months. The main outcome measurement was overall mortality. The secondary outcomes were the association of age and sex, concomitant head injury, lung and cardiac contusions, the onset of mechanical ventilation (MV) and chest tubes insertion, the length of mechanical ventilation and ICU stay in days, injury severity score (ISS), associated surgeries, pneumonia, sepsis, the implication of standard fluid therapy and steroid therapy, and the systemic and regional analgesia, with the overall mortality rates.

RESULTS

The mortality rate was 19.9% overall. The shorter onset of MV and chest tube insertion, and the longer ICU, and hospital length of stay were noted in the mortality group compared with the survived group (P-value less than 0.05). Concomitant head injuries, associated surgeries, pneumonia, pneumothorax, sepsis, lung and myocardial contusion, standard fluid therapy, and steroid therapy were significantly correlated with mortality (P-value less than 0.05). MV had no statistically significant effect on mortality. Regional analgesia (58.8%) had a significantly higher survival rate than intravenous fentanyl infusion (41.2%). In multivariate analysis, sepsis, concomitant head injury, and high ISS were independent predictors for mortality [OR (95% CI) = 568.98 (19.49-16613.52), 6.86 (2.86-16.49), and 1.19 (1.09-1.30), respectively].

CONCLUSION

The current report recorded mortality of 19.9% between flail chest injury patients. Sepsis, concomitant head injury, and higher ISS are the independent risk factors for mortality when associated with flail chest injury. Considering restricted fluid management strategy and regional analgesia may help better outcome for flail chest injury patients.

Impact of a comprehensive care bundle educational program on device-associated infections in an emergency intensive care unit

Introduction

Implementation of care bundles was shown to reduce the incidence of device-associated infections (DAIs). Substantial improvements in the rate of infection have been achieved by applying educational programs for infection control. Objectives: To demonstrate the impact of a comprehensive care bundle educational program (CCBEP) on DAIs, mortality rates in an emergency Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and improving healthcare workers (HCWs') knowledge, compliance to care bundle, and infection control practice.

Methods

A quasi-experimental study was carried out in an 15-beds emergency ICU, from May 2017 to October 2018. A comprehensive care bundle educational program was implemented. It covers items regarding device care bundle and infection control.

Results

Device care bundle compliance was variable between different bundle items. There was a significant improvement in HCWs' knowledge after the educational program intervention especially in hand hygiene, catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) bundle, and total knowledge. There was a higher risk of ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI), and CAUTI in the pre-intervention phase compared to post-intervention (RR: 1.4, 1.4, and 1.9 respectively). The total mortality rate decreased from 24.2/100 to 16.7/100 patients after intervention.

Conclusions

There was a statistically significant improvement in compliance with device care bundles with a decrease in the incidence of DAIs.