Although prehospital trauma guidelines call for spine immobilization for many trauma victims, there is a lack of clarity in medical institutions as to how trauma or emergency medicine physicians should proceed to remove cervical immobilization devices (CIDs) and "clear" the spine. Despite wide variations in physicians' approaches to such matters, however, certain specific aspects of vertebral a...

In the prehospital setting, the emergency care provider must anticipate that some patients will manifest with difficult airways. The use of video laryngoscopy to secure an airway in the prehospital setting has not been explored widely, but has the potential to be a useful tool. This article briefly reviews some of the major video laryngoscopes on the market and their usefulness in the prehospit...

results nearly 60% of the responders had witnessed more than two emergencies in the previous six months and 55% had actively participated in helping the injured person. the nature of the help was mainly by calling for an ambulance (41.5%), transporting the injured (19.7%) and consoling the victim (14.9%). majority (78.1%) of the responders informed that they had run to the victim (42.4%) or had...

BACKGROUND This study compared prehospital on-scene times (OSTs) for patients treated by nurse-staffed emergency medical services (EMS) with OST for patients treated by a combination of EMS and physician-staffed helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS). A secondary aim was to investigate the relationship between length of OST and mortality. METHODS All trauma patients treated in the prior...

OBJECTIVES The prehospital management of trauma patients remains controversial. Little is known about the time each procedure contributes to the on-scene duration, and this information would be helpful in prioritizing which procedures to perform in the prehospital setting. We sought to estimate the contribution of procedures to on-scene duration focusing on intubation and establishment of intra...