Factors associated with refractory pain in emergency patients admitted to emergency general surgery

摘要

BACKGROUND: Oligoanalgesia in emergency departments (EDs) is multifactorial. A previousstudy reported that emergency providers did not adequately manage patients with severe paindespite objective findings for surgical pathologies. Our study aims to investigate clinical andlaboratory factors, in addition to providers’ interventions, that might have been associated witholigoanalgesia in a group of ED patients with moderate and severe pains due to surgical pathologies.METHODS: We conducted a retrospective study of adult patients who were transferred directlyfrom referring EDs to the emergency general surgery (EGS) service at a quaternary academic centerbetween January 2014 and December 2016. Patients who were intubated, did not have adequaterecords, or had mild pain were excluded. The primary outcome was refractory pain, which wasdefi ned as pain reduction <2 units on the 0–10 pain scale between triage and ED departure.RESULTS: We analyzed 200 patients, and 58 (29%) had refractory pain. Patients with refractory painhad signifi cantly higher disease severity, serum lactate (3.4±2.0 mg/dL vs. 1.4±0.9 mg/dL, P=0.001), and lessfrequent pain medication administration (median [interquartile range], 3 [3–5] vs. 4 [3–7], P=0.001), whencompared to patients with no refractory pain. Multivariable logistic regression showed that the number of painmedication administration (odds ratio [OR] 0.80, 95% confi dence interval [95% CI] 0.68–0.98) and ED serumlactate levels (OR 3.80, 95% CI 2.10–6.80) were signifi cantly associated with the likelihood of refractory pain.CONCLUSIONS: In ED patients transferring to EGS service, elevated serum lactate levelswere associated with a higher likelihood of refractory pain.