Evaluation of the Effects of Concomitant Alcohol Positivity on the Characteristics and Severity of Injury in Geriatric Trauma Patients in the Emergency Department

Abstract

Aim: This study aimed to evaluate whether concomitant alcohol positivity is an effective factor in trauma characteristics and severity in geriatric trauma patients and evaluate the relationship with poor composite outcomes in alcoholic patients. Materials and Methods: Patients aged 60 and over who presented to the emergency department due to trauma and whose blood ethanol level was studied were included in the study. Patients were assigned to the poor composite outcome group according to the intensive care unit stay, need for emergency blood transfusion/operation, or in-hospital mortality, and the groups with and without poor composite outcomes were compared. Results: Three hundred thirty-six patients with complete data were included in the study. There were 101 patients with an ethanol level of >0.5 mg/dL. Ethanol-positive patients had more head trauma, and their Injury Severity Scores and liver function tests were higher (p<0.05 for all values). 11.3% (n=11.3) of all patients and 15.8% (n=16) of ethanol-positive patients developed poor composite outcomes. When ethanol-positive patients were compared according to the poor composite outcome, it was observed that patients had more diabetes, more trauma to the head, abdomen, and extremities, higher creatine levels, and lower albumin and blood ethanol levels (p<0.05 for all values). Conclusion: In this study, we showed that the majority of alcoholic geriatric trauma patients were male and single, that they had more frequent head trauma compared to the non-alcoholic group, that the presence of alcohol was associated with increased severity of injuries regardless of the ethanol level, but was not effective in terms of poor composite outcomes.

Keywords

• ethanol
• alcohol
• geriatric
• trauma
• poor outcome