Tag Archives: trauma activation

Resuscitation

ACS Trauma Abstracts #3: Using Mechanism Criteria To Activate The Trauma Team

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Most US trauma centers have two tiers of trauma activation. The higher tier is typically called for physiologic derangements like hypotension, tachypnea, or decreased mental status. This triggers arrival of the full trauma team for rapid assessment and management.

The second tier is reserved for patients who may be less seriously injured and usually results in a reduced team. And depending on how good the activation criteria for this tier are, many patients eventually turn out to have no serious injuries and are discharged from the emergency department. This is the purest form of overtriage, and if it occurs frequently, can wear down your trauma team and waste resources.

Criteria for the second tier trauma activation may include mechanism of injury criteria such as ejection, pedestrian struck, intrusion into the passenger compartment, death at the scene, and other similar criteria. They sound like good criteria, but how helpful are they, really? The group at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas performed a retrospective review of their trauma activations over a one and a half year period to test the efficacy of some of these criteria. They had recently added some mechanism-based criteria to their second tier activations.

Here are the factoids:

  • During the study period, they had 1325 second tier activations, and 603 were based on mechanism criteria
  • The mean injury severity score of mechanism-based criteria was only 5, versus 10 for anatomic criteria (significant)
  • A whopping 37% of mechanistic criteria patients were discharged home from the ED, versus only 10% for other criteria (also significant)
  • Second tier activations for physician discretion were just as good as non-mechanism criteria, with an ISS of 10 and 13% discharged home
  • Looking at specific criteria, compartment intrusion, ejection, and death in the compartment appeared to be the major overtriage offenders, with an ISS of 5 and 40% discharge rate
  • Incidentally, penetrating injury proximal to knee or elbow had very high overtriage rates, with an ISS of 1 and discharge rate of 48%

Bottom line: Trauma centers are encouraged to review their trauma triage criteria periodically, especially when overtriage rates are high. This center is presenting a nice paper that shows the benefit of doing this. They identified four mechanistic criteria that do not appear to be any better than just relying on physician discretion. What they are not saying is that it is probably better to rely on physiologic and anatomic criteria, as well as physician discretion, to determine which level of trauma activation to trigger.

And incidentally, the new ACS highest-level criterion of gunshot proximal to knee or elbow may not be everything its cracked up to be. It’s difficult to say for sure because stabs and gunshots were not separated out in this abstract, and the number they encountered was not specified. But it certainly suggests this criterion needs some fine-tuning as well.

Reference: Intrusion, ejection, and death in the compartment: mechanism-based trauma activation criteria fail to identify seriously injured patients. JACS 225(4S1):S56, 2017.

Philosophy

When Is It Too Late To Call A Trauma Activation?

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This is a related, follow-on post from yesterday, where I discussed activating your trauma team after transfer from another hospital. What about patients presenting directly to your hospital, but some time after their injury?

Admit it. It’s happened to you. You get paged to a trauma activation, hustle on down to the ED, and get dressed. The patient is calmly and comfortably lying on a cart, staring at you like you’re from Mars. Then you hear the story. He has a grade V spleen injury. But he just got back from CT scan. And his car crash was yesterday!

Is this appropriate? The answer is no! But, as you will see, the answer is not always as obvious as this example. The top thing to keep in mind in triggering a trauma activation appropriately is the reason behind having them in the first place.

The entire purpose of a trauma activation is speed. The assumption must be that your patient is dying and you have to (quickly) prove that they are not. It’s the null hypothesis of trauma.

Trauma teams are designed with certain common features:

  • A group of people with a common purpose
  • The ability to speed through the exam and bedside procedures via division of labor
  • Rapid access to diagnostic studies, like CT scan
  • Availability of blood products, if needed
  • Immediate access to an OR, if needed
  • Recognition in key departments throughout the hospital that a patient may need resources quickly

Every trauma center has trauma activation triage criteria that try to predict which patients will need this kind of speed. Does the patient in the example above need this? NO! He’s already been selected out to do well. Why, he’s practically finished the nonoperative solid organ management protocol on his own at home.

Here are some general rules:

  • If the patient meets any of your physiologic and/or anatomic criteria, they are or can be sick. Trigger immediately, regardless of how much time has passed.
  • If they meet only mechanism criteria and it’s been more than 6 hours since the event, they probably do not need the fast track.
  • If they only meet the “clinician / EMS judgment” criteria, think about what the suspected injuries are based on a quick history and brief exam. Once again, if more than 6 hours have passed and there are no physiologic disturbances, the time for needing a trauma activation is probably past.

If you do decide not to trigger an activation in one of these cases, please let your trauma administrative team (trauma medical director, trauma program manager) know as soon as possible. This may appear to be undertriage as they analyze the admission, and it’s important for them to know the reasoning behind your choice so they can accurately document under- and over-triage.

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Philosophy

Do I Have To Call My Trauma Team For Incoming Transfers?

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I had a great question sent in by a reader last week:

Some trauma centers receive a number of transfers  from referring hospitals. Much of the time, a portion of the workup has already been done by that hospital. If the patient meets one or more of your trauma activation criteria, do you still need to activate your team when they arrive?

And the answer is: sometimes. But probably not that often.

Think about it. The reason you should be activating your team is that you suspect the patient may have an injury that demands rapid diagnosis and treatment. The purpose of any trauma activation is speed. Rapid evaluation. Fast lab results. Quick access to CT scan or OR. If a significant amount of time has already passed (transported to an outside hospital, worked up for an hour or two, then transported to you), then it is less likely that a trauma activation will benefit the patient.

There are four classes of trauma activation criteria. I’ll touch on each one and the need to activate in a delayed fashion if present, in priority order.

  • Physiologic. If there is a significant disturbance in vital signs while in transit to you (hypotension, tachycardia, respiratory problems, coma), then you must activate. Something else is going on that needs to be corrected as soon as the patient arrives. And remember the two mandatory ACS criteria that fall into this category: respiratory compromise/need for an emergent airway, and patients receiving blood to maintain vital signs. But a patient who needed an airway who is already intubated and no longer compromised does not need to be a trauma activation.
  • Anatomic. Most simple anatomic criteria (e.g. long bone or pelvic fractures) do not need a trauma activation unless the patient is beginning to show signs of physiologic compromise. However, anatomic criteria that require rapid treatment or access to the OR (proximal amputations, mangled or pulseless extremities, spinal cord injury) should be activated.
  • Mechanism. Most of the vague mechanistic criteria (falls, pedestrian struck, vehicle intrusion) do not require trauma activation after transfer to you. But once again, if the mechanism suggests a need for further rapid diagnosis or treatment (penetrating injury to abdomen), then activate.
  • Comorbidities. This includes underlying diseases, extremes of age, and pregnancy. In general, these will not require trauma activation after they arrive.

Bottom line: In many cases, the patient transferred in from another hospital will not need to be a trauma activation, especially if they have been reasonably assessed there. The patient should be rapidly eyeballed by your emergency physicians, and if there is any doubt about their condition, activate then.

However, if little workup was done at the outside hospital (my preference), and the injuries are “fresh” (less than a few hours old), then definitely call your team. 

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General, Tips

Best Practice: Laundry Basket In The Resus Room?

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How do you get patients out of their clothes during a trauma resuscitation? Most of the time, I bet your answer is “with a pair of scissors.” And once they are off, what do you do with them? Admit it. You just throw them on the floor. And sometime later, someone’s job is to find it all, put it in a bag, and store it or hand it over to the police.

There are more problems than you might think with this approach. First, and most importantly to the patient, their stuff can get lost. Swept up with all the other detritus from a trauma activation. And second, their belongings may become evidence and it’s just been contaminated.

So here’s an easy solution. Create a specific place to put the clothes. Make it small, with a tiny footprint in your trauma room. Make it movable so it can be kept out of the way. And make sure it is shaped so it can contain a large paper bag to preserve evidence without contamination.

And here’s the answer:

Yes, it’s a plain old laundry basket. The perfect solution. And best of all, these are dirt cheap when you are used to seeing what hospitals charge for stuff. So your ED can buy several ($14.29 ea on Amazon.com) in case they can’t be cleaned anymore or just disappear.

Trauma Center

EAST 2017 #13: An Extra Trauma Activation Tier For Geriatric Trauma

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Our elderly population is growing rapidly, and the average age of the patients on the trauma service is escalating. These patients offer a number of challenges throughout their presentation to the hospital and the rest of their stay. Some trauma centers are now organizing special teams or response types to deal with the unique needs of this population. A few have adopted a separate response type when injured elderly patients present to the ED.

The group at Reading Hospital  implemented a separate trauma activation tier, “Tier 3”, driven by emergency physicians, to manage these patients. Tier 3 was designed to identify patients > 65 years of age with the potential for occult blunt injury to the head and torso. The normal activation criteria at this center would not have necessarily identified these patients. This study retrospectively looked at demographics and outcomes for two separate three year periods, one before and one after implementation of Tier 3.

Here are the factoids:

  • Geriatric volume increased significantly from 1715 to 3688 patients (!!), and more received expedited workup as either a trauma activation or Tier 3
  • There were statistically significant decreases in time to CT (102 vs 128 minutes) and ED length of stay (361 vs 432 minutes) (see my comments)
  • Mortality decreased from 8% to 5% overall, and from 19% to 11% in patients with head AIS > 3, both of which were significant
  • Regression analysis showed that implementation of the Tier 3 response was an independent predictor of improved survival

Bottom line: This poster shows results that suggest having a specific response for select elderly patients who don’t meet trauma activation criteria can be beneficial. However, the devil is in the details. Each center must develop criteria for the Tier 3 response that mesh with their own activation criteria. And the details of that response need to be clinically significantly better than the usual consult response.

Questions and comments for the authors/presenters:

  1. Be careful not to confuse statistical significance with clinical significance. Decreasing mean time to CT from 2:08 to 1:42 is not that big of a deal. The same applies to 7 hours in the ED vs 6.
  2. Please share the Tier 3 criteria and details of the ED response.
  3. Have you modified your Tier 3 criteria and/or response since inception, and if so, how and why?

Click here to go the the EAST 2017 page to see comments on other abstracts.

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Reference: “Tier 3”: Long term experience with a novel addition to a two-tiered triage system to expedite care of geriatric trauma patients.. Poster #34, EAST 2017.