relationship between free intra-abdominal fluid and organ injury in blunt abdominal trauma

background focused assessment with sonography for trauma (fast) is a precise, non-invasive, and low cost method to assess free abdominal fluid in trauma patients. objective this study assessed the relationship between free intra-abdominal fluid and organ injury in blunt abdominal trauma and designed a scoring system based on fast. patients and methods a total of 200 patients with blunt abdominal trauma who had stable vital signs were assessed. for all patients, fast sonography was done by one sonographer and the free fluid score in the abdomen, which was in the range of 0-8, was calculated. immediately, an intravenous contrast-enhanced ct was performed in all patients and abdominal solid organ injuries were assessed. results were analyzed using the kruskal-wallis test, the mann-whitney test, and roc curves. results the mean age of the patients was 29.6 ± 18.3. in 71% of patients, trauma injury was due to car accidents. fast was negative in 33% of subjects. considering the cut-off point of 3, sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value were calculated to be 0.83, 0.98, 0.93, and 0.95, respectively. comparing the mean scores from fast and ct-scan results showed that there is a correlation between the severities of organ injury and fast scores (p < 0.001). conclusion it was found that the amount of the intra-abdominal free fluid measured by fast is associated with solid abdominal organ injury in patients with blunt trauma.