Value of white blood cell count as a predictor of organ injury in adults with abdominal trauma

Introduction: Trauma is the leading cause of death in the first 4 decades of life, and the abdomen the third most affected location. For a complete lesion assessment in abdominal trauma, CT scan is the reference. Blood count is one of the first biological tests available in emergency, the white blood cell (WBC) could serve as a predictor of the existence of abdominal organ injury and therefore, the severity of the trauma. Our aim is to evaluate the ability of WBC count to predict an abdominal organ injury. Results: Sixty-eight patients were included. The mean of age was 31.3 years ± 20.7. The sex ratio was 12.9. There were blunt trauma in 54.4% of cases and penetrating trauma in 45.6% of cases. There was intra-abdominal organ injury in half of the patients (n = 34). The WBC count was higher in patients with organ injury (14690 elements per mm3 ± 5252.7) compared to those without injury (9752.38 elements per mm3 ± 4168.7). This difference was statistically significant (p = 0.001). The realization of the ROC curve found an AUC of 0.804 (IC: 0.672-0.935). There was a statistically significant relationship between leukocytosis and existence of an organ injury (p