Hospital-Acquired Pressure Injury: Clinical Characteristics and Outcomes in Critical Care

Electronic health records (EHRs) enable us to use and re-use electronic data for various multiple purposes, such as public reporting, quality improvement, and patient outcomes research. Current hospital-acquired pressure injury (HAPI) risk assessment instruments have not been specifically developed for intensive care unit (ICU) patients and showed false positive rates in this specific populations. Previous research studies report a number of risk factors; however, it is still not clear what factors influence ICU HAPI in this population. As part of a larger research study, we performed an exploratory analysis by using a large electronic health record data. The aims of this study were to compare characteristics of patients who developed HAPIs during their ICU stay with those who did not, and to determine whether the two groups were different in the aspects of length of ICU stay, discharge disposition, and discharge destinations. We conducted chi-square test and t-test for group comparison. Association was examined by using bivariate analyses. Pearson correlation coefficients were used to examine correlation between LOS and number of medications. Our findings suggest a number of consistent and potentially modifiable risk factors, such as sedation, feeding tubes, and the number of medications administered. The mortality of the HAPI group was significantly higher than the non-HAPI group in our data. Discharge disposition was significantly different between the groups. 67% of the HAPI group transferred to intermediate or long-term care hospitals whereas 57.7% of the non-HAPI group went home after discharge. Awareness of these risk factors can lead to clinical interventions that can be preventative in the ICU setting.