Do concomitant urological injuries in severely injured patients lead to poorer outcomes?: A multivariate risk analysis

Background: Severely injured patients with associated genitourinary (GU) injuries have only rarely been investigated in the current literature. If at all, analyses are commonly focussed on renal injuries, marginalising other GU traumas such as ureteral injuries. In this study, we would like to characterise patients with GU injuries and analyse the impact of such injuries on mortality and length of stay. Materials and methods: The inclusion criteria for this retrospective analysis of TraumaRegister DGU® data were: Injury Severity Score ≥ 16 within the period between 2009 and 2016 with available data on age and length of stay. A descriptive analysis was used to compare patients with and without GU injuries. The impact of GU injuries on mortality and length of hospital stay was evaluated by means of multivariate regression analyses. Results: In all, 90,962 patients met the inclusion criteria; 5.9% of them had suffered GU injuries (n = 5345). The prevalence in patients with pelvic fractures was up to 19%. On average, patients with GU trauma were 10 years younger (42.9 vs. 52.2 years) and more severely injured (ISS: 31.8 vs. 26.4). The multivariate analyses demonstrated that GU injuries in severely injured patients are no independent risk factor for mortality. However, particularly bladder and genital injuries result in longer hospitalisation. Conclusion: GU injuries do not represent an additional risk factor for mortality. However, after adjusting for established prognosis factors, they can cause prolonged periods of hospitalisation of severely injured patients.