Review Paper on Penetrating Brain Injury: Ethical Quandaries in the Trauma Bay and Beyond

Markers of Futile Resuscitation in Traumatic Hemorrhage: A Review of the Evidence and a Proposal for Futility Time-Outs during Massive Transfusion

The reduction in the blood supply following the 2019 coronavirus pandemic has been exacerbated by the increased use of balanced resuscitation with blood components including whole blood in urban trauma centers. This reduction of the blood supply has diminished the ability of blood banks to maintain a constant supply to meet the demands associated with periodic surges of urban trauma resuscitation. This scarcity has highlighted the need for increased vigilance through blood product stewardship, particularly among severely bleeding trauma patients (SBTPs). This stewardship can be enhanced by the identification of reliable clinical and laboratory parameters which accurately indicate when massive transfusion is futile. Consequently, there has been a recent attempt to develop scoring systems in the prehospital and emergency department settings which include clinical, laboratory, and physiologic parameters and blood products per hour transfused as predictors of futile resuscitation. Defining futility in SBTPs, however, remains unclear, and there is only nascent literature which defines those criteria which reliably predict futility in SBTPs. The purpose of this review is to provide a focused examination of the literature in order to define reliable parameters of futility in SBTPs. The knowledge of these reliable parameters of futility may help define a foundation for drawing conclusions which will provide a clear roadmap for traumatologists when confronted with SBTPs who are candidates for the declaration of futility. Therefore, we systematically reviewed the literature regarding the definition of futile resuscitation for patients with trauma-induced hemorrhagic shock, and we propose a concise roadmap for clinicians to help them use well-defined clinical, laboratory, and viscoelastic parameters which can define futility.

Traumatic Brain Injury as an Independent Predictor of Futility in the Early Resuscitation of Patients in Hemorrhagic Shock

This review explores the concept of futility timeouts and the use of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as an independent predictor of the futility of resuscitation efforts in severely bleeding trauma patients. The national blood supply shortage has been exacerbated by the lingering influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of blood donors available, as well as by the adoption of balanced hemostatic resuscitation protocols (such as the increasing use of 1:1:1 packed red blood cells, plasma, and platelets) with and without early whole blood resuscitation. This has underscored the urgent need for reliable predictors of futile resuscitation (FR). As a result, clinical, radiologic, and laboratory bedside markers have emerged which can accurately predict FR in patients with severe trauma-induced hemorrhage, such as the Suspension of Transfusion and Other Procedures (STOP) criteria. However, the STOP criteria do not include markers for TBI severity or transfusion cut points despite these patients requiring large quantities of blood components in the STOP criteria validation cohort. Yet, guidelines for neuroprognosticating patients with TBI can require up to 72 h, which makes them less useful in the minutes and hours following initial presentation. We examine the impact of TBI on bleeding trauma patients, with a focus on those with coagulopathies associated with TBI. This review categorizes TBI into isolated TBI (iTBI), hemorrhagic isolated TBI (hiTBI), and polytraumatic TBI (ptTBI). Through an analysis of bedside parameters (such as the proposed STOP criteria), coagulation assays, markers for TBI severity, and transfusion cut points as markers of futilty, we suggest amendments to current guidelines and the development of more precise algorithms that incorporate prognostic indicators of severe TBI as an independent parameter for the early prediction of FR so as to optimize blood product allocation.

Comparative Analysis of Clinical Severity and Outcomes in Penetrating Versus Blunt Traumatic Brain Injury Propensity Matched Cohorts

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a global health challenge; however, penetrating brain injury (PBI) remains under-represented in evidence-based knowledge and research efforts. This study utilized data from the Trauma Quality Improvement Program (TQIP) of the National Trauma Data Bank (NTDB) to investigate outcomes of PBI as compared with clinical-severity-matched non-penetrating or blunt TBI. A total of 1765 patients with PBI were 1:1 propensity score-matched for clinical severity with blunt TBI patients. The intent of PBI was self-inflicted in 34.1% of the cases, and the mechanism was firearm-inflicted in 89.1%. Mortality was found to be significantly more common in PBI than in the severity- matched TBI cohort (33.9% vs. 14.3 %, p < 0.001) as was unfavorable outcome. Mortality was mediated by withdrawal of life-sustaining therapies (WOLST) 30% of the time, and WOLST occurred earlier (median 3 days vs. 6 days, p < 0.001) in PBI. Increased rate of mortality was observed with a Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) of <11 in PBI as compared with <7 in blunt TBI. In conclusion, PBI patients exhibited higher mortality rates and unfavorable outcomes; one third of excess mortality was mediated by WOLST. The study also brings into question the applicability of the conventional TBI classification, based on GCS, in PBI. We emphasize the need to address the observed disparities and better understand the distinctive characteristics and mechanisms underlying PBI outcomes to improve patient care and reduce mortality.