Paramedics must avoid too much injury care

(Reuters Health) – Intensive life support efforts outside the hospital are helpful when someone’s heart has stopped beating, but they offer no benefit, and may even be harmful, for injured patients.
 

I could have told them that for the price of a steak and a few beers. In fact I HAVE told people that for the price of a steak and a few beers. Do we really need a study to understand that patients who are injured (trauma) need to be in the hospital where they can be treated by surgeons? As the surgeons say, “Nothing heals like cold steel.”

In the latest study, researchers from the University of Athens found that the evidence strongly supports the use of advanced life support when someone’s heart has stopped beating outside the hospital – at a shopping mall or swimming pool, for example. Compared to basic life support, the use of the advanced technique increased the odds of being discharged alive from the hospital by 50%, the researchers said.

CPR and defibrillation are the keys to Return Of Spontaneous Circulation (ROSC), but by itself that does not do enough to increase survival to discharge neurologically intact. Which is the real goal of cardiac resuscitation. Again, not exactly earth shattering news.

But advanced resuscitation didn’t seem to boost the chances of survival for injured patients and may even reduce it a bit, according to the Greek group.

Ask Princess Diana about that. Wait, you can’t because some French surgeons killed her by staying on scene and f****** around instead of transporting to the big building full of doctors and nurses where the surgeons could have saved her from her survivable injury.

Here’s my favorite quote,

Doctors generally get in the way, especially at trauma scenes. Especially since the vast majority of doctors don’t actually deal with emergency situations.

Trauma or medical, do what you have to on scene, do the rest on the way to the hospital.

Remember, the ambulance has wheels for a reason. As a former partner of mine was fond of saying “Transport is part of the treatment.”