Examining the influence of blood alcohol level on the incidence of pneumonia & sepsis complications following traumatic injury.

Abstract

BACKGROUND\nThe purpose of this study was to examine the impact of blood alcohol concentration (BAC) on the occurrence of pneumonia and sepsis among traumatic injury victims.\n\n\nMETHODS\nRetrospective study data were retrieved from the 2007-2010 National Trauma Data Bank and included all patients ≥14 years of age, with a blunt or penetrating injury, who were taken to a level 1 or level 2 trauma center, had complete systolic blood pressure and heart rate records, and had a confirmed blood alcohol test at the time of hospital arrival. Patients characteristics and outcome information were compared between two groups (those with a BAC above the legal limit [>0.08\xa0g/dL] and those with a negative BAC result), followed by propensity score matching and a follow-up paired analysis.\n\n\nRESULTS\nOf 279,460 patients, 92,960 tested positive for alcohol with a BAC above the legal limit. There were clear demographic differences between the groups (p\xa0<\xa00.001). Therefore, propensity score matching was performed to better balance the groups and the resulting standardized mean differences of less than 10% indicated successful matching. When comparing the occurrence of both pneumonia and sepsis between the matched pairs, there was a statistically significantly higher rate of pneumonia in the alcohol positive patients, 8.0% vs. 7.3%, (p\xa0=\xa00.03), but no significant clinical difference. Additionally, no significant difference was observed for the rate of sepsis across the groups (p\xa0=\xa00.62).\n\n\nCONCLUSION\nPatients who tested positive for alcohol following a traumatic injury showed a statistically higher incidence of pneumonia, but there was no clinically significant difference. Additionally, there was no significant difference identified in the incidence of sepsis between the BAC groups.