Factors affecting mortality of hospitalized facial trauma patients in Al-Ain City, United Arab Emirates

Abstract

Background: Facial injuries affect one third of severely injured patients. These injuries have devastating long-term negative impact on quality of life. We aimed to study the epidemiology of facial injuries and factors affecting mortality of hospitalized facial trauma patients in Al-Ain City, United Arab Emirates Methods: This is a retrospective analysis of a prospectively collected data from Al-Ain Hospital Trauma Registry. All patients with facial injury who were hospitalized for more than 24 hours or who died after arrival at the hospital during the period from January 2014 to December 2017 were studied. Univariate analysis was used to compare patients who died and those who survived. Significant factors were then entered into a backward logistic regression model to define factors affecting mortality. Results: 408 patients having a mean age of 31.9 years were studied, 87.3% were males. The main mechanisms of injury were road traffic collisions (45.1%) and fall from height (11.3%). 289 (70.8%) patients had associated injuries which were mainly in the head and chest. The backward logistic regression model showed that GCS was the only factor that predicted mortality, p<0.0001 with the best cut-off point of 7.5 having a sensitivity of 0.972 and a specificity of 0.8. The ROC had an area under the curve of 0.924.Conclusions: Majority of facial injury patients in our setting are young males who were involved in road traffic collsions or falls from height. The most important factor prediciting mortality of these patients was the low GCS. Those having GCS of 8 and more had a better chance for survival. This information is very important when counselling patients or their relatives for facial surgery.