Posted on July 30, 2001 at 2:05 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Trauma-specific intensive care units (ICUs) result in better patient outcomes and reduced costs and hospital stays for trauma patients, according to a study by researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). Details of the study appear in the July 2001 issue of The American Surgeon journal.

“The number of trauma critical care units is exploding in this country due to the notion that state of the art technology and highly trained personnel improve patient outcomes,” says Gerald McGwin, assistant professor with the departments of epidemiology and surgery at UAB. “However, until now, there have been no studies published about the benefits of these units to trauma patients.”

The study, conducted at UAB Hospital, included 204 patients — 144 treated in surgical intensive care from June 1, 1996, to January 4, 1998, and 60 treated in the hospital’s new “closed” trauma intensive care unit from January 5, 1998, to July 1, 1998. The study was designed to evaluate the impact of the trauma-specific ICU on patient outcomes, cost and length of hospital stay compared to that of the general surgical ICU.

“In many hospitals, critically ill trauma patients are admitted to a general-purpose surgical ICU, but trauma patients are likely to have more complicated healthcare needs than others being treated in the unit,” says McGwin. “Our study showed that trauma patients did far better when admitted to a ‘closed’ trauma-specific ICU — one with individual patient rooms managed by surgeons with added qualifications in surgical critical care and staffed by highly trained nurses and other personnel.”

The study found that patients treated in the trauma ICU were weaned from ventilators an average of 15 hours sooner and experienced significantly fewer complications such as heart and kidney failure. It also found that the hospital charge for trauma ICU patients was an average of $34,244 less and that the patients tended to stay in the hospital an average of three days less than those treated in the surgical ICU.

“The implications of these findings are clear,” says McGwin. “Improvements in patient outcomes are most likely the result of improvements made in the specialized intensive care of patients.”