Preventable deaths among major trauma patients in Mersey Region, North Wales and the Isle of Man

Abstract

Preventable and unexpected deaths following injury were identified from among 1088 victims of major injuries arising in a defined population and area during a 12-month period. In hospital, 44 (16 per cent) deaths from blunt injury, one death from penetrating injury and one death from drowning were preventable. In patients sustaining blunt injuries, 22 per cent of non-head-injury deaths and 13 per cent of head-injury deaths were preventable. In all preventable head-injury deaths either a delay in operation (35 per cent) or no operation for mass lesions (65 per cent) occurred, often because of misdiagnosis as alcohol intoxication (22 per cent) or CVA (22 per cent). Multiple preventable factors were more likely in non-head-injury deaths and included missed injuries (67 per cent), poor airway care (57 per cent), delayed or no operation (52 per cent), undertransfusion (38 per cent) and inadequate surgery (19 per cent). By TRISS methodology the outcome was unexpected, in 53 per cent blunt injury deaths in hospital and 2.8 per cent of survivors. Three preventable blunt injury deaths (6.8 per cent) had probabilities of survival < 50 per cent and were not, therefore, identified as unexpected by TRISS. A preventable death rate of 16 per cent for blunt injuries equates to 638 preventable blunt injury deaths each year in England and Wales.