TABLE III.

Time from Injury to Admission and Risk of Infection

	N	Percentage with Infection	Percentage with Major Infection
Patients admitted directly to trauma center
≤2 hr	142	20.4	11.3
>2 hr	43	55.8*	30.2*
Patients transferred to trauma center
1 to 3 hr	53	17.0	13.2
4 to 10 hr	33	27.3	12.1
11 to 24 hr	36	36.1†	27.8†

^*The risks of infection and major infection were significantly higher for patients for whom the time at the scene or in transit was prolonged (more than two hours from the time of injury to admission) as compared with those for whom the time from injury to admission was two hours or less (p < 0.01, chi-square test).

^†The risks of infection and major infection were significantly higher in the eleven-to-twenty-four-hour group as compared with the one-to-three-hour group (p < 0.05, chi-square test of homogeneity).