Serum Methamphetamine Positivity in Trauma Patients Undergoing Surgery Has No Negative Effect on Postoperative Morbidity and Mortality
James Zhou, Adela Wu, Jingya Miao, Harminder Singh- Emergency Medicine
Abstract
Introduction:
The link between methamphetamine (METH) use and mortality or morbidity, particularly perioperative complications, associated with trauma surgery are not well characterized. This study aims to address this by performing a comparison of surgical outcomes between METH-negative (METH−) and METH-positive (METH+) trauma patients.
Methods:
An Institutional Review Board-approved retrospective chart review was performed on all trauma patients admitted to our Level 1 trauma center who underwent surgical operations between 2015 and 2020. Patients were categorized into METH− and METH+ groups. Patient characteristics such as age, sex, race, Injury Severity Score (ISS), presence of peri-operative complications, and mortality, amongst others, were used to perform univariate comparisons. Additional multi-variate comparisons were performed across both the whole cohort and with age, sex, and ISS-matched groups.
Results:
Of 571 patients who met the final inclusion criteria, 421 were METH− and 150 METH+. The METH+ group also possessed a lower median ISS (
Conclusion:
Our results suggest that METH use does not exert a positive effect on mortality or morbidity in the acute trauma surgery setting and that ISS may be a more significant contributor, suggesting severity, and etiology of injury are also important considerations for trauma surgery evaluation.