Mortality risk factors in chest trauma patients in a level one trauma center in southern Iran.

Chest trauma is one of the most prevalent subgroups of trauma, accounting for 1 out of 4 deaths relating to trauma. Gaining insights into the trends of chest trauma is crucial in tackling its significant role in causing injuries and fatalities, particularly in low- and middle-income nations. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the prevalence of chest trauma, the types of injuries, mechanisms of injury, and predictors of mortality in the largest level one trauma center in southern Iran. This retrospective study included 4257 patients who were admitted to a tertiary medical center in southern Iran with chest trauma as the primary diagnosis from March 2019 to March 2022. All patients were divided into survived (n = 3505) and deceased (n = 752) groups. Data were analyzed by IBM SPSS statistics version 26, using independent samples t-test, Chi-Square test, and multivariate logistic regression. The mean age was 37 ± 16.1 and 50.15 ± 21.5 in survived group and deceased group, respectively. Most of the population were men in both groups. The mean of the injury severity score (ISS) was higher in the deceased group (37.22 ± 25.32) than in the survived group (15 ± 10.4). All on-arrival vital signs show significant differences between the two groups. Among various types of thoracic injuries, pneumothorax (OR 2.04, CI 1.52-2.73, P = 0.001) and rib fracture (OR 1.34, CI 1.00-1.79, P = 0.04) increases the odds of mortality. Multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that age, gender, ISS, types of thoracic injury, and some on-arrival vital signs are proper mortality predictors in patients with chest wall injury. Multiple risk factors including age, gender, ISS, type of injury, and on-arrival vital signs have been indicated for predicting mortality in chest trauma patients. Proper care and immediate management of these risk factors could lower the mortality morbidity among these patients.