Introduction:

Patients who have experienced trauma usually develop hypovolemic shock, which determines different levels of tissue hypoperfusion. The determination of lactate levels has been used as a reliable biomarker in the assessment of the magnitude of hypo-perfusion. Additionally, it has been established that lactic clearance in the first 6 h has value as a prognostic measurement for the mortality rate of these patients. However, beyond 6 h its utility is controversial.

Objective:

To evaluate the predictive capacity of serial lactic acid as well as clearance (at the time admitted, 12 and 24 h) in mortality cases for trauma patients admitted to the ICU.

Materials and methods:

During the period between 2010 and 2014, an observational longitudinal cohort study was conducted with trauma patients admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at the Clínica Universidad de la Sabana. The clinical and demographic data was registered in a data base using Microsoft Excel and analyzed in STATA 12® statistical software.

In order to determine the association between each measurement with mortality after seven days, serial measurements of lactic acid were taken at admission time, 12-24 h as well as the clearance of lactic acid at 12 and 24 h.

Results:

233 patients participated during the time of the study. The average age was 38 years. 78% of the patients were male, with 21% of the mortality at seven days in the ICU. Among the severity indexes, an average of 14 in APACHE II, 9 in SOFA and 25 in ISS was found. The average of length of stay for survive patients was nine days in contrast to five days of mortality patients.

In brief, the lactic acid average was associated with mortality at seven days in the three time measurements.

On the other hand, the values of the receptor curve operating showed the best performance of the discrimination at 24 h with a 2.35 cut-off point and OR 1.65 (CI 95% 1.27-2.13).

Conclusions:

Our findings determined a similar performance of the lactic acid as compared to other studies, especially in the lactic acid level at 24h with relevant discrimination over 2.35 mEq/L at 24. Nonetheless, reverse causality can eventually occur.

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