Simultaneous Casualty Admissions—Do they Affect Treatment in the Receiving Trauma Center?

BACKGROUND: Simultaneous trauma admissions expose medical professionals to increased workload. The impact of simultaneous trauma admissions on hospital allocation, therapy, and outcome is currently unclear. We hypothesized that multiple admission-scenarios impact the diagnostic pathway and outcome. METHODS: The TraumaRegister DGU® was utilized. Patients admitted between 2002–2015 with an ISS ≥ 9, treated with ATLS®- algorithms were included. Group ´IND´ included individual admissions, two individuals that were admitted within 60 min of each other were selected for group ´MULT´. Patients admitted within 10 min were considered as simultaneous (´SIM´) admissions. We compared patient and trauma characteristics, treatment, and outcomes between both groups. RESULTS: 132,382 admissions were included, and 4,462/3.4% MULTiple admissions were found. The SIM-group contained 1,686/1.3% patients. The overall median injury severity score was 17 and a mean age of 48 years was found. MULT patients were more frequently admitted to level-one trauma centers (68%) than individual trauma admissions were (58%, p < 0.001). Mean time to CT-scanning (24 vs. 26/28 min) was longer in MULT / SIM patients compared to individual admissions. No differences in utilization of damage control principles were seen. Moreover, mortality rates did not differ between the groups (13.1% in regular admissions and 11.4%/10,6% in MULT/SIM patients). CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that simultaneous treatment of injured patients is rare. Individuals treated in parallel with other patients were more often admitted to level-one trauma centers compared with individual patients. Although diagnostics take longer, treatment principles and mortality are equal in individual admissions and simultaneously admitted patients. More studies are required to optimize health care under these conditions.