Abstract

Introduction: Although using clinical scales to predict shock severity is interesting for physicians asthey provide rapid evaluation without need for special equipment, they are not highly reliableTherefore, the present study was designed with the aim of assessing the agreement between shockindex and base defects as scales of determining shock severity in multiple trauma patients. MethodsIn the present prospective cross-sectional study, the agreement of shock index and base defects indetermining shock severity in multiple trauma patients presenting to emergency department (ED) wasassessed. Patients with blunt multiple trauma aged between 15 to 6 years with 8-15 consciousnesslevel and without any underlying illness were enrolled and finally the data were analyzed using SPSS20. Results: In total, 387 patients with the mean age of 36.31 ± 15.03 years (15 – 90) were studied(80.6% male). Most patients were in the 21-30 years age group (37.7%) and the most common traumamechanisms were car accident (50.1%) and falling from height (24.8%). In addition, 15 (3.9%)patients had systolic blood pressure <90 mmHg and 49 (12.7%) had a heart rate >100/min. Accordingto kappa coefficient, a 0.824 agreement was seen between these scales in rapid prediction of shockindex. With the shock index increasing, the number of blood units received in the initial 6 hours oadmission to ED for patient resuscitation rose from 0.02 to 1.72 units. Conclusion: Considering theresults of the present study, it seems that shock index and base defect scales have acceptableagreement in prediction of shock severity in multiple trauma patients. This agreement increases in the2 extremes namely normal and severe cases (level 1 and 4).

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