Advances in Trauma Care

Advances in Trauma Care

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, accidents and harmful injuries are the leading cause of death between the ages of one to forty four years old. This center believes that improving the availability to hospitals and trauma centers would be a huge help for the factor of survival. Research is coming to prove that there needs to be change and improvement from the care of the staff, from the scene of the injury to the time of arrival.

Haut, a researcher and his coworkers surveyed mortality rates of 776,734 trauma patients and found out that 49.3% of them had received IV fluids before their arrival to the hospital. The percentage of people who passed away, and received pre-IV fluids, was higher than the people who did not. 4.8% received fluids and 4.5% did not. These averages of deaths are equal to having more than 2,000 more deaths from patients who did receive pre-arrival IV fluids. From the results of this test, researchers believe that the time spent getting an IV started is wasting time that could be spend in transportation. This concludes to them, that it could be a factor to why so many more deaths occur to people who have IVs while at the scene. Researchers have proved that the time limit from the scene to the ambulance shouldn't take no longer than ten minutes. Then they needed to be headed to the trauma center, however when EMT's need to stop and place an IV line in the patient, this delays and extends this time, which is another factor to the mortality rate. "Saunders agrees however, there has to be some leeway... due to the geographical place, the type of transportation, the weather, the road conditions and the areas of specialty on the scene."

With all of this in consideration, the Lancet researchers found in several tests that an acid called Tranexamic Acid, given to trauma patients who have access bleeding, have a better chance of living. This medication is given before arrival to a trauma center, kind of like an IV but with better positives. With testing, they found out that patients who received it three hours within their accident would have a better chance of survival than patients who received it after three hours. They also found out that if it was used world-wide in almost all trauma centers, it could save roughly about 70,000 lives in a year. However the downside to this is that a professional would still have to take the time to put an IV line in.

Overall, my opinion in this matter was that, thinking about what is being said, I can really see where the researchers are coming from. I never really took the time to ever think about it, but really when someone is in a traumatic accident and they are bleeding very badly, they need to be rushed for special care; however it delays that time greatly, when you have to place an IV line in. Sometimes, also, it doesn't work on the first try, and they