Long-term consequences of electrical injury without initial signs of severity: The AFTER-ELEC study

There is no specificity of emergency or long-term management of benign electrical injuries (EI). The main objective of our work was to describe the occurrence of long-term complications of EI considered as benign.

Single-center retrospective study of a cohort of adult patients who consulted for EI without initials signs of severity in an emergency department between 2012 and 2019. All included patients were secondarily contacted by telephone at least one year after their EI to complete a questionnaire.

76 adult patients visited the emergency department and 48 of them could be contacted by phone. 82% of the recalled patients had at least one complication following their EI. The main long-term complications were neurological (65%), psychological (58%) and cardiological (31%). Patients recalled eight years after EI had higher rates of neuropsychological complications than those recalled one year after EI. Only the time spent in the emergency department was statistically longer in patients who developed long-term complications compared to those who did not.

The occurrence of long-term neuropsychological complications predominates. The knowledge and management of these long-term consequences must be particularly well known by emergency physicians because they are often the first medical contact of the patient. Our results also seem to show a crescendo in time of the occurrence of long-term complications.

all health professionals involved in the care of victims of a EI must be made widely aware of the occurrence of these long-term complications, particularly neuropsychological ones, in order to improve the long-term patient care.