Overview Fluid resuscitation is a vital treatment in the care of hypotensive trauma patients suffering from shock. Restoration of effective circulating blood volume improves oxygen delivery, thereby diminishing the untoward effects of shock at the cellular and organ level. The…
Introduction Prehospital trauma airway management is probably the biggest challenge faced by emergency medical services (EMS) providers. These professionals must acquire and maintain essential skills to adequately manage airway problems at the scene and during transport of trauma victims to…
Introduction The transport of combat casualties by air parallels the history of military aviation. Although many texts cite balloon transport during the Franco-Prussian War (1870) as the first instance of aeromedical evacuation (AE), the true initiation of AE awaited the…
In 2018 over 28 million Americans sought treatment for nonfatal injuries and an additional 240,583 deaths occurred from all injury-related causes. Annually, 826,000 emergency medical services (EMS) field providers care for these injured patients, accounting for 18% of all EMS…
History of battlefield trauma systems Ever since man has gone to war, civilizations have made preparations for the care of battlefield casualties. The earliest written reports of such battlefield care date back to the Egyptians with the Edwin Smith Papyrus,…
Mass casualties due to combat operations, or natural or manmade disasters, have the capacity to overwhelm multiple levels of care and evacuation capabilities of any system. Military and civilian institutions need a mass casualty response plan in order to facilitate…
Since the proven effectiveness of trauma systems in the 1970s, the evaluation, treatment, and transport of trauma victims in the prehospital arena have played an important role in the overall management of those victims. Although some aspects of that role…
Introduction The experience of general surgery residents with major, open surgical procedures is low compared with historical norms and continues to decline. Many reasons for this have been adduced, including a decrease in resident training hours, nonoperative management of many…
Trauma was the first medical specialty to regionalize health care delivery to specialized centers and to systematically measure health care outcomes. The first trauma scores were designed for a specific purpose: to standardize injury descriptions and rank injury severity to…
Throughout history, wars have resulted in the development of medical care techniques that have been later adopted successfully in civilian trauma. Colombia as a whole has been involved since the early 1960s in nonconventional warfare fueled by the cocaine drug…