A regional trauma system to optimize the pre-hospital triage of trauma patients.

Introduction: Pre-hospital triage is a key element in a trauma system that aims to admit patients to the most suitable trauma center, and may decrease intra-hospital mortality. We evaluated the performance of a pre-hospital procedure in a regional trauma system through measurements of the quality of pre-hospital medical assessment and the efficacy of a triage protocol.

Methods: Our regional trauma system included 13 hospitals categorized as Level I, II or III trauma centers according to their technical facilities.

Trauma network for severely injured patients.

Survival after severe trauma may depend on a structured chain of care from the management at the scene of trauma to hospital care and rehabilitation. In the USA, the trauma system is organized according to a pre-hospital triage by paramedics to facilitate the admission of patients to tertiary trauma centres. In France, trauma patients are transported to the most suitable facility, according to the on-scene triage by an emergency physician.

Current management of severe pelvic and perineal trauma.

Mortality associated with pelvic and perineal trauma (PPT) has fallen from 25% to 10% in the last decade thanks to progress accomplished in medical, surgical and interventional radiology domains (Dyer and Vrahas, 2006) [1]. The management strategy depends on the hemodynamic status of the patient (stable, unstable or extremely unstable). Open trauma requires specific treatment in addition to control of bleeding.

[Exceptional medical circumstances: interest of an interhospital support strategy within the North Alps emergency trauma network].

The Northern French Alps Emergency Network (RENAU) has a main objective the improvement of the quality of the care in the field of the emergency medical treatment. With this French medical system, we developed a procedure allowing the detachment of a medical-surgical team of the university hospital to help general hospital team in the event of immediate vital emergency situation with untransportable patient. We reported the successful implementation of this support strategy for a 51-year-old patient arrived in a hospital of the network in extremely serious hemodynamic shock due to an important hemorrhagic pericardial effusion with tamponnade 1 day after percutaneous closure of the patent foramen ovale (PFO).

Mechanism, glasgow coma scale, age, and arterial pressure (MGAP): a new simple prehospital triage score to predict mortality in trauma patients.

Objectives: Prehospital triage of trauma patients is of paramount importance because adequate trauma center referral improves survival. We developed a simple score that is easy to calculate in the prehospital phase.

Design: Multicenter prospective observational study.