Improving CT scanner efficiency for trauma team activations in the emergency department.

Background And Objectives: A Trauma Team Activation (TTA) is initiated when a patient has sustained a life or limb-threatening injury thereby necessitating resources of a large care team. Previously, a CT scanner was cleared at the time of the prehospital TTA call. Wide variability in the time it took to stabilize patients often led to extended CT scanner idle time.

Avoiding Cribari gridlock 2: The standardized triage assessment tool outperforms the Cribari matrix method in 38 adult and pediatric trauma centers.

Objectives: The Cribari Matrix Method (CMM) is the current standard to identify over/undertriage but requires manual trauma triage reviews to address its inadequacies. The Standardized Triage Assessment Tool (STAT) partially emulates triage review by combining CMM with the Need For Trauma Intervention, an indicator of major trauma. This study aimed to validate STAT in a multicenter sample.

Rethinking the definition of major trauma: The need for trauma intervention outperforms Injury Severity Score and Revised Trauma Score in 38 adult and pediatric trauma centers.

Background: Patients' trauma burdens are a combination of anatomic damage, physiologic derangement, and the resultant depletion of reserve. Typically, Injury Severity Score (ISS) >15 defines major anatomic injury and Revised Trauma Score (RTS) <7.84 defines major physiologic derangement, but there is no standard definition for reserve.

Penetrating Colon Trauma Outcomes in Black and White Males.

Introduction: Racial disparities have been both published and disputed in trauma patient mortality, outcomes, and rehabilitation. In this study, the objective was to assess racial disparities in patients with penetrating colon trauma.

Methods: The National Trauma Data Bank was searched for males aged ≥14years from 2010 through 2014 who underwent operative intervention for penetrating colon trauma.

Increasing numbers of rib fractures do not worsen outcome: an analysis of the national trauma data bank.

Increasing age and number of rib fractures are thought to portend a worse outcome with blunt chest trauma, although this is not clearly substantiated in the literature. We hypothesized that these parameters have a significant and synergistic effect, worsening patient outcome. Using the National Trauma Data Bank, we evaluated patients from 2002 to 2006.

Predicting trauma admissions: the effect of weather, weekday, and other variables.

One of the challenges all hospitals, especially designated trauma centers, face is how to make sure they have adequate staffing on various days of the week and at various times of the year. A number of studies have explored whether factors such as weather, temporal variation, holidays, and events that draw mass gatherings may be useful for predicting patient volume. This article looks at the effects of weather, mass gatherings, and calendar variables on daily trauma admissions at the three Level I trauma hospitals in the Minneapolis-St.

Is distal aortic perfusion in traumatic thoracic aortic injuries necessary to avoid paraplegic postoperative outcomes?

Objectives: Traumatic thoracic aorta injuries account for nearly 8,000 deaths annually in the United States. Clamp-and-sew techniques can lead to high rates of paraplegia. Use of distal aortic perfusion can lead to heparin-related complications, particularly with associated head trauma.

Protocol-driven ventilator weaning reduces use of mechanical ventilation, rate of early reintubation, and ventilator-associated pneumonia.

Background: Mechanical ventilation is the defining event of intensive care unit management. To reduce use, a literature-based protocol was introduced to facilitate weaning. The effect of protocol-driven ventilator weaning on ventilator use, ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), and intensive care unit (ICU) length of stay (LOS) is described in a survey of 2 years' activity in a multidisciplinary surgical ICU.