Introduction: The aim of this study was to evaluate the multi-trauma critical patient management in the Clinical Emergency County Hospital of Tîrgu Mureş, Romania.
Material and method: We conducted a cross-sectional study, data collection was achieved by extracting records from hospital patients database. We collected the data from January 2007 until June 2011. The initial search revealed a number of 784 patients diagnosed with multi-trauma. From this sample we included in the study only a number of 312 patients diagnosed with critical multi-trauma from whom 194 underwent emergency surgery. We evaluated clinical consults distribution, the frequency of mechanisms of injury, therapeutical and diagnostic procedures, clinical transfers, lesions associations, traumatic lesions that required emergency surgery, injured organs and thoracic injuries that required emergency surgery.
Results: From the total number of patients, 214 (68.58%) were men and 98 (31.42%) were women. The incidence of multi-trauma regarding age, showed a peak in the 1st and 2nd decade. Regarding the mechanism of injury, the main cause is represented by car accidents, followed by assault and fall. It was observed that the most frequent clinical consults were the surgical ones, followed by orthopaedic and neurosurgical consults. In the Surgical Department, in the studied period of time, there was admitted a number of 272 patients diagnosed with critical multi-trauma.
Conclusions: In recent years, the incidence of critical multi-trauma patients increased especially in the first and second life decades. Critical multi-trauma patients with emergency surgery presented a low vital prognosis, with a mortality of 4.77%. Survival of this category of patients could increase due to the establishment of a complete chain of care (patient management): accidents site, transport, emergency service, hospital operating room, intensive care postoperative therapy.