OBJECTIVE To evaluate whether the type of on-site care a trauma patient receives affects outcome. SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA The controversy regarding the prehospital care of trauma patients between Advanced Life Support (ALS) and Basic Life Support (BLS) is ongoing. Due to this unresolved controversy, as well as historical, cultural, and political factors, there are significant variations with ...

BACKGROUND Blunt implementation of Western trauma system models is not feasible in low-resource communities with long prehospital transit times. The aims of the study were to evaluate to which extent a low-cost prehospital trauma system reduces trauma deaths where prehospital transit times are long, and to identify specific life support interventions that contributed to survival. METHODS In t...

BACKGROUND Prehospital care provided by specially trained, physician-based emergency services (P-EMS) is an integrated part of the emergency medical systems in many developed countries. To what extent P-EMS increases survival and favourable outcomes is still unclear. The aim of the study was thus to investigate ambulance runs initially assigned 'life-saving missions' with emphasis on long-term ...

BACKGROUND The prompt administration of coronary reperfusion therapy for patients with an evolving acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is crucial in reducing mortality and the risk of serious clinical complications in these patients. However, long-term trends in extent of prehospital delay and factors affecting patient's care-seeking behavior remain relatively unexplored, especially in men and wo...

Abstract: This case report discusses an ethical dilemma about consent and patient autonomy from prehospital emergency services. It is argued that the dilemma involves deep ethical problems, and that these problems have not received sufficient attention in the literature on the ethical dimension of emergency medicine and prehospital provider-patient communication. The discussion illustrates a ge...

Ambulance staff with advanced training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation and equipped with monitor/defibrillators were used as the initial responders to collapse calls within a medically based prehospital coronary care system. During 21 months, in a population of approximately 120,000, ambulance staff successfully resuscitated six patients from ventricular fibrillation; there were four long term...

INTRODUCTION We aimed to pilot test the delivery of sepsis education to emergency medical services (EMS) providers and the feasibility of equipping them with temporal artery thermometers (TATs) and handheld lactate meters to aid in the prehospital recognition of sepsis. METHODS This study used a convenience sample of prehospital patients meeting established criteria for sepsis. Paramedics rec...

BACKGROUND The human dive reflex (HDR), a physiological phenomenon similar to the bradycardia reflex used by marine mammals during prolonged submersion, can be employed in managing paroxysmal supraventricular tachycardia (PSVT). This review aims to identify a standardised HDR technique for haemodynamically stable PSVT, to determine the effectiveness of the HDR and to define its usefulness in th...