Published in:
Open Access
01-12-2014 | Extended abstract
Haemorrhage control of the pre-hospital trauma patient
Author:
Ross Davenport
Published in:
Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine
|
Special Issue 1/2014
Login to get access
Excerpt
Haemorrhage following major injury remains the most common potentially preventable cause of traumatic death with exsanguination typically occurring within three hours of injury. Key to improving outcomes is a “care bundle” of measures to facilitate early diagnosis, rapid haemorrhage control, systemic and topical haemostatic support and short scene times [
1]. The last decade has seen a paradigm shift in treatment strategies and transfusion algorithms [
2] with an emphasis on haemostatic or damage control resuscitation (DCR). A key objective of this proactive and empiric approach to transfusion is to directly target Acute Traumatic Coagulopathy (ATC) which itself is associated with a four-fold increase in mortality and poor patient outcomes. This article will focus only on advanced interventions without further discussion of the fundamentals of pre-hospital haemorrhage control i.e. oxygenation, intravenous or intra-osseous assess, pelvic and limb splints and splinting of the facial skeleton. …