Analysis of Length of Hospital Stay of Road Crash Patients in the Philippine General Hospital’s Integrated Surgical Information System from 2008–2017

Abstract

Introduction. Mobility in the Philippines has increasingly become a major issue especially with the growing economy of the country. Collisions on the road cannot be entirely avoided; thus, we focus our efforts to reducing road crashes that result in death and serious injuries. To do this, we analyzed road crash patients brought to the Philippine General Hospital (PGH).

Objective. The study aimed to quantify how crash factors affect length of hospital stay (LOS) of patients brought to PGH, as well as to look for associations between the LOS and demographic and clinical variables.

Methods. This is a retrospective study using database of patients admitted in PGH from 2008 to 2017. The study focused on LOS, which was used as the dependent variable for Poisson regression and Kruskal-Wallis H tests. The determinants considered in the study are socio-demographic variables such as age, sex, civil status, victim type, vehicle type, patient classification, and region of incidence, as well as clinical variables such as consult type, outcome of the patient, body parts injured, Glasgow coma score (GCS), among others.

Results. We analyzed data of 4979 road crash patients from the PGH database. We found that civil status, age, patient classification, vehicle type, and province were associated with LOS. For the clinical variables, consult type, primary service, outcome of patient, body injuries, GCS and systolic blood pressure were found significant. Poisson regression suggests longer hospital stay for patients with injuries sustained in the head and neck (RR = 1.102, p < 0.001), face (RR = 1.218, p < 0.001), and extremity (RR = 1.673, p < 0.001).

Conclusion. Results show that injury sustained in certain parts of the body such as head and neck, face, and extremity significantly affect LOS. Results also show that subgroups within demographic variables affect LOS. There is a need to address the ever-increasing number of road crash patients and implications to length of hospitalization.