Trauma MedEd Newsletter Index

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I’ve been putting the Trauma MedEd newsletter together for nearly 2 years now. I’ve gotten several requests for information on back issues, so I’ve decided to publish an index of all the issues. Click any link to download the corresponding issue. If you want to subscribe and get new issues emailed to you first, click here. Thanks for reading!

The September issue was emailed to subscribers earlier this week. It will be released to non-subscribers in the blog next Monday.

To subscribe to the newsletter, click here.

Prehospital Lift-Assist Calls

A number of 9-1-1 calls (quite a few, I am told) are made, not for injury or illness, but because the caller needs help getting back into bed, chair, etc. It is also common that prehospital providers are frequently called back to the same location for the same problem, or a more serious one, within hours or days.

Yet another study from Yale looked at the details of lift-assist calls in one city in Connecticut (population 29,000) during a 6 year period. The town has a fire department based EMS system with both basic and advanced life support, and they respond to 4,000 EMS calls per year. 

Some interesting factoids:

  • Average crew time was about 20 minutes
  • 10% of cases required additional fire department equipment, either for forced entry or for assistance with bariatric patients
  • About 5% of all calls were for lift-assist, involving 535 addresses
  • Two thirds of all calls went to one third of those addresses (174 addresses)
  • There were 563 return calls to the same address within 30 days (usual age ~ 80)
  • Return calls were for another lift-assist (39%), a fall (8%), or an illness (47%)

Bottom line: It looks to me that we are not doing our elderly patients any favors by picking them up and putting them back in their chair/bed. Lift-assist calls are really a sentinel event for someone that is getting sick or who has crossed the threshold from being able to live independently to someone who needs a little more help (assisted living, etc). Prehospital personnel should systematically look at and report the home environment, and communities should automatically involve social services to help ensure the health and well being of the elder. And a second call to the same location should mandate a medical evaluation in an ED before return to the home.

Reference: A descriptive study of the “lift-assist” call. Prehospital Emergency Care, online ahead of print, September 2012.

Hypotensive Patient? You’ve Got 90 Seconds!

You’re running a trauma activation, and everything is going great! Primary survey – passed. Resuscitation – lines in, fluid going. You are well into the exam in the secondary survey.

Then it happens. The automated blood pressure cuff shows a pressure of 72/44. But the patient looks so good!

You recycle the cuff. A minute passes and another low pressure is noted, 80/52. You move the cuff to the other arm. Xray comes in to take some pictures. You roll the patient. 76/50. Well, you say, they were lying on the cuff. Recycle it again.

A minute later, the pressure is 56/40, and the patient looks gray and is very confused and diaphoretic. It’s real! But how long as it been real? An easy 5 minutes have passed since the first bad reading.

Bottom line: Sometimes it’s just hard to believe that your patient is hypotensive. They look so good! But don’t be fooled. If you get a single hypotensive reading, STOP! You have 90 seconds to figure out if it’s real, so don’t do anything else but. Check the pulse rate and character with your fingers. Do a MANUAL blood pressure check. It’s fast and accurate. If you have the slightest doubt, ASSUME IT’S REAL. Remember, your patient is bleeding to death until proven otherwise. And it’s your job to prove it. Fast!

Solid Organ Injury Tips

Over the years, I’ve written about solid organ injury management many times. Here is a summary of some practical pointers and tips, some old and some new. They are as evidence-based as I can get them. This kind of stuff is not always in the doctor and nursing books.

  • Please refer to our solid organ injury protocol, which you can download here.
  • Ward and ICU branches are order sets at my hospital, not necessarily admitting locations. If you have a special unit or step-down area that can provide ICU-level monitoring, use it for the ICU order set.
  • Strongly consider interventional radiology (IR) and angiography in all adult patients with contrast extravasation (children generally do not qualify unless they show signs/sx of ongoing volume loss). Consider also in high grade injuries, because they may have active bleeding that isn’t quite brisk enough to see on CT.
  • Serial hemoglobin measurements are not part of the protocol. They are only used to help decide if transfusion might be needed. Vital signs will always signal failure before the hemoglobin does.
  • Nearly all patients may be up and eating immediately, or certainly by the next morning. No need for protracted NPO status or bed rest. Really no need for it at all!
  • Failure really falls into 2 types: hard and soft. Hard failure is a single episode of definitive hypotension (usually 80s or less) or development of peritoneal signs, and requires an emergency trip to the OR. Soft failure is transient or modest hypotension that responds rapidly to a fluid bolus. If IR has not already been used, a quick trip there may obviate the need for operation. However, another one of these bouts makes it a hard fail. Time for OR.
  • Hard failure can only be treated with blood, some crystalloid, and a knife. Pressors, steroids, or other drugs can only be used if they come in liter bags and can be given at over 1000cc/hr. That means never.
  • In IR, give the radiologist 30 minutes to stop the bleeding. Don’t let them dawdle for hours. If the patient has a hard fail, abort and go to OR; do not let the radiologist persist.

After discharge, our usual orders are:

  • Normal activity (non-impact) for 6 weeks
  • All activity (except high impact) thereafter
  • High impact activity (tackle football, rugby, serious extreme sports) only after 12 weeks (no good data for this one)
  • No repeat CT scanning to judge healing
  • Warn patients of the good possibility of a transient increase in pain on days 7-10. This is common in many unless they’ve been embolized.
  • Patient to call if unrelenting increase in pain, or increasing orthostatic symptoms, fevers chills

Related posts:

New Trauma MedEd Newsletter Released Tonight To Subscribers!

The September issue of Trauma MedEd is ready! Subscribers will receive it tonight. This issue is devoted to prevention

Included are articles on:

  • Motorcycle helmets
  • Elderly falls
  • Dug use
  • Prevention map mashups
  • And more!

As mentioned above, subscribers will get the issue delivered tonight to their preferred email address. It will be available to everybody else later this week on the blog.

Check out back issues, and subscribe now! Get it first by clicking here!

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