Ultrasound (US) has been used for in-hospital evaluation of the trauma victim for many years. The outcome in severely injured patients remains heavily influenced by initial life support and early care, as time plays a major role. Development of handheld, battery-powered, low-weight US machines has created the possibility of bringing US to the prehospital setting, thus gaining a potential for ea...

INTRODUCTION To determine emergency physician (EP) opinions of prehospital patient care reports (PCRs) and whether such reports are available at the time of emergency department (ED) medical decision-making. METHODS Prospective, cross-sectional, electronic web-based survey of EPs regarding preferences and availability of prehospital PCRs at the time of ED medical decision-making. RESULTS We...

INTRODUCTION The role of the emergency medical dispatch centre (EMDC) is essential to ensure coordinated and safe prehospital care. The aim of this study was to implement an incident report (IR) system in prehospital emergency care management with a view to detecting errors occurring in this setting and guiding the implementation of safety improvement initiatives. METHODS An ad hoc IR form fo...

BACKGROUND Each year, ~89,000 (180/100,000) new cases of head injury are reported in South Africa (SA), with the majority of patients being in the economically active population. Hypotension and hypoxaemia significantly increase the morbidity and mortality in patients who have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Cerebral tissue is particularly vulnerable to these secondary insults in the p...

INTRODUCTION Exsanguination following trauma is potentially preventable. Extremity tourniquets have been successfully implemented in military and civilian prehospital care. Prehospital control of bleeding from the torso and junctional area's remains challenging but offers a great potential to improve survival rates. This review aims to provide an overview of potential treatment options in both ...

INTRODUCTION In a populous city like Mumbai, which lacks an organized prehospital emergency medical services (EMS) system, there exists an informal network through which victims arrive at the trauma center. This baseline study describes the prehospital care and transportation that currently is available in Mumbai. METHODS A prospective trauma database was created by interviewing 170 randomly ...

BACKGROUND In The Netherlands, standard prehospital trauma care is provided by emergency medical services and can be supplemented with advanced trauma care by Mobile Medical Teams. Due to observed over and undertriage in the dispatch of the Mobile Medical Team for major trauma patients, the accuracy of the dispatch criteria has been disputed. In order to obtain recommendations to invigorate the...

OBJECTIVE Calculating weight-based drug doses for pediatric patients is difficult, with significant error potential. In the prehospital setting, few safeguards currently avert pediatric drug administration errors. We sought to determine whether use of a protocol-specific pediatric code card enables prehospital care providers to calculate more consistently accurate weight-based drug doses, volum...

BACKGROUND Prehospital trauma care is stressful and requires multi-professional teamwork. A decrease in the number of accident victims ultimately affects the routine and skills and underlines the importance of effective training. Standardized courses, like PHTLS, are established for health care professionals to improve the prehospital care of trauma patients. The aim of the study was to investi...