Lactate Clearance in Severe Penetrating Trauma

Trauma is one of the leading causes of death in the world. Patients who suffer a traumatism and do not die can have temporary or permanent neurological or motor sequels, with the serious health problems that this can cause. Pineda-Garcés et al. carried out this study in order to investigate the connection between lactate clearance and mortality in patients with severe penetrating trauma in a Colombian university hospital.

This prospective cohort study was conducted in a university hospital in Medellin between 2016 and 2017. The study involved 130 adult patients admitted to the emergency department with severe penetrating trauma who met the inclusion criteria, who had to undergo emergency surgery, after which they were transferred to the ICU of the same hospital. These patients underwent had blood samples taken at admission and at 6, 12, 18 and 24 hours.

It was observed that the patients included in this study who ended up dying had significantly higher absolute lactate values at admission than the other patients. Likewise, the deceased patients had a lower percentage of lactate clearance in the first 24 hours after admission.

The authors found that there is a propensity for increased mortality when patients fail to clear 50% of the initial lactate 12, 18 or 24 hours after hospital admission.

This study demonstrates that the monitoring of lactate levels in the first 24 hours after admission is a prognostic factor in patients with severe penetrating trauma.

The above lines are a summary of the article written by Diana Catalina Pineda-Garcés, Mercedes González-Urhan and Carlos H. Morales-Uribe, which was published in 2018 by Rev Colomb Cir. (Revista Colombiana de Cirugía – Colombian Journal of Surgery) with the original title Aclaramiento de lactato en trauma penetrante grave

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Aclaramiento de Lactato en Trauma Penetrante Grave