Background: The reported incidence of venous thromboembolism (VTE) disease in trauma is 1-58% and is considered a preventable cause of mortality. Positive blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is found in 8-45% of trauma admissions; however, its association with VTE is controversial.
Objectives: We hypothesized that a positive BAC on admission would be associated with a lower rate of VTE in a large national database of trauma patients.
Methods: We queried the largest United States trauma registry, National Trauma Data Bank (2007-2015), for any patient with positive BAC on admission. The primary outcome was VTE and the secondary outcome was mortality. A multivariable logistic regression model was used for analysis.
Results: From 2,725,032 patients (70.1% male, 29.9% female), 1,800,216 (66.1%) had a negative BAC while 924,816 (33.9%) had a positive BAC. A positive BAC was associated with lower rates of VTE (OR = 0.88, CI = 0.86-0.90, p < 0.001) and mortality (OR = 0.91, CI = 0.90-0.93, p < 0.001).
Conclusion: In a large national database, trauma patients with a positive BAC were associated with a lower rate of VTE compared to those with negative BAC. Additionally, trauma patients with positive BAC had a lower association with mortality. These findings remained after adjustment of well-known risk factors for VTE and mortality, respectively.
Keywords: Alcohol; mortality; trauma; venous thromboembolism.