Causes, Outcomes and Direct Medical Cost of Injuries in Adult Patients Admitted to Intensive Care Units in Ain Shams University Hospitals

Abstract

Injury is a major, preventable public health problem in terms of morbidity, mortality and disability. Worldwide about 5.8 million people die every year as a result of an injury and the projections for 2020 show that 8.4 million deaths are expected annually (Park, 2000; Hofman et al., 2005). In developing countries, injuries in general are increasing due to increase in urbanization, motorization, civil violence, wars and criminal activities (Museru et al., 2002). It is estimated that almost 90% of deaths due to injuries occur in low/middle income countries (Mock et al., 2003). In these countries, Injury remains a major cause of hospitalization and intensive care utilization and consumes a significant amount of the health care budget (Moini et al., 2000). In Egypt, it was estimated that there were 30 000 deaths, 800,000–1,000,000 hospitalizations and 2 000,000 minor injuries in Egypt in 2007 (WHO, 2010a). Data from a national survey in 5 governorates estimated that for every injury death due to injury, nearly 15 injured persons require hospital admission and 48 require emergency care services (ratio 1:15:50) (Hafez et al., 2010). Despite the fact that only a minority of patients seen in hospital as a result of trauma are admitted to the ICU (King et al., 1996), the remarkable similarities observed between the basic demographic and injury characteristics suggest that the ICU trauma population is a relatively representative subset of the hospital injury population, differing only in injury severity, but not in age, gender, or injury mechanism and type (Gardiner et al., 2000). This study aims to describe the causes, outcomes as well as hospital direct medical costs for adult injury patients admitted to surgical ICUs in Ain Shams University hospital over 6 months duration