Mortality Rates Down for Adult Trauma Patients in Last Decade

(HealthDay News) – The mortality rate for adult patients admitted to trauma centers in Pennsylvania has declined over the past decade.

In an effort to measure longitudinal trends in mortality for injured adult patients admitted to trauma centers, Laurent G. Glance, MD, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in New York, and colleagues conducted a retrospective cohort study involving 208,866 adult patients admitted to level I or level II trauma centers in Pennsylvania between 2000–2009.

The researchers found that, overall, mortality decreased by 29%; mortality rates for patients admitted with moderate and severe trauma were reduced by 42 and 51%, respectively, between 2000–2009. Mild- and very severe-trauma mortality rates did not change significantly. During this same time period, major complications were reduced by 32%.

“Although our results suggest that ongoing efforts to improve trauma care have led to significant improvements in trauma outcomes, there remains a large performance gap across hospitals caring for trauma patients,” the authors write. “This gap represents an opportunity to improve trauma outcomes even beyond the 40% reduction in mortality observed during the last decade.”

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