The revised Canadian Bleeding (CAN-BLEED) score for risk stratification of bleeding trauma patients: a mixed retrospective-prospective cohort study.

Abstract

Background: Traumatic hemorrhage is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality. There is considerable interest in risk stratification tools to aid with early activation of intervention pathways for bleeding patients. In this study, we refine the Canadian Bleeding (CAN-BLEED) score for the prediction of major interventions in bleeding trauma patients.

Methods: We conducted a mixed retrospective-prospective cohort study. We included a retrospective cohort from the CAN-BLEED derivation study, from September 2014 to September 2017. We also conducted a prospective cohort from May 2019 to August 2021 and included both datasets for refinement of the CAN-BLEED score. The primary outcome was major intervention, defined by a composite of massive transfusion, embolization, or surgery for hemostasis. Predictors were pre-specified based on previous validation work. We used a stepdown procedure and regression coefficients to create a clinical risk stratification score. We used bootstrap internal validation to assess optimism-corrected performance.

Results: We included 1368 patients in the overall cohort. Incidence of penetrating injury was 23% and median injury severity score was 17. The overall incidence of the need for major intervention was 17%. The revised score included 8 variables: systolic blood pressure, heart rate, lactate, penetrating mechanism, pelvic instability, Focused Abdominal Sonography for Trauma positive for free fluid, computed tomography positive for free fluid, or contrast extravasation. The C-statistic for the simplified score is 0.89. A score cut-off of less than 2 points yielded a 97% (94-98%) sensitivity in ruling out the need for major intervention.

Conclusion: The revised CAN-BLEED score offers a clinically intuitive and internally validated tool with excellent performance in identifying patients requiring major intervention for traumatic bleeding. Further efforts are required to evaluate its performance with an external validation.