Greater Distance Traveled for Renal Trauma Care is Not Associated with Higher Rates of Intervention

Introduction: Trauma patients frequently may be transported significant distance to receive care at a level one trauma center. Increasing distance may cause delays in care. We sought to investigate whether distance traveled for level 1 trauma care affected rates of intervention for renal trauma.

Methods: We queried our institutions reportable trauma database from the years 2015 to 2022. This data was filtered for all patients that had ICD codes pertaining to renal trauma. All renal trauma patients with zip codes where they sustained their injury were included. We then calculated the distance traveled to our hospital via Google Maps for each patient. We aggregated diagnosis codes for percutaneous angioembolism and nephrectomy. Injury severity scores (ISS) were collected. We divided patients into two groups based on distance traveled (0-30 miles and 31 + miles). We also analyzed the number of angioembolizations and open renal surgery completed for each mile distance category and analyzed for a difference between the groups.

Results: Our database yielded 307 cases of renal trauma that met inclusion criteria. We found no difference in rates of percutaneous angioembolism and open renal surgery between patients that traveled different distances for renal trauma care.

Conclusions: Few studies have assessed distance traveled for trauma care and need for intervention. Our findings that an increased travel distance did not lead to a significantly increased risk for intervention are reassuring. Based on these findings, distance traveled for appropriate trauma care may not be a factor when deciding on transfers for renal trauma.