Trauma patients treated and hospitalized in a Tennessee medical center had a 33% lower rate of COVID-19 vaccination than non-trauma patients who were hospitalized following treatment in the emergency department (ED), according to a new study.
This vaccination gap widened as vaccines became more widely available, according to a study published online in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).
“These data show that there’s an opportunity to vaccinate a high-risk population that’s currently not vaccinated and admitted to the hospital,” said Bradley M. Dennis, MD, FACS, a trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC).
This study is important because it emphasizes the role hospitals can play in improving vaccination rates, said Eileen Bulger, MD, FACS, acting division chief of trauma, burns, and critical care at the University of Washington in Seattle and chief of trauma and acting surgeon-in-chief at Harborview Medical Center.
The study included 1,290 ED patients admitted to the trauma service and 23,901 other patients who came to the ED at VUMC between January 1 and June 1, 2021.
The researchers found that 11.7% of trauma patients were vaccinated before arrival compared with 17.4% of the other ED patients (P<0.001). The proportional difference between the two patient groups widened from 1.847 after the first week of the study to 18.585 during week 21, the last week of the study – suggesting a widening vaccination gap. Vaccines became available to all adults in week 14 of the study.
By the last week of the study, approximately 22% of trauma patients were vaccinated before arrival compared with approximately 41% of other ED patients.
The study defined fully vaccinated patients as those who were two weeks or more past getting either the second dose of the two-dose Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or the single-dose Johnson & Johnson Janssen vaccine.
Read the full study here.
