European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society
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Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Oct 2023
ReviewExtremity injuries in the Sahelian conflict: lessons learned from a French Forward Surgical Team deployed in Gao, Mali.
This study aimed to analyse extremity combat-related injuries (CRIs) and non-combat related injuries (NCRIs) treated in the French Forward Surgical Team deployed in Gao, Mali. ⋯ CRIs were the most severe injuries and did not involve the upper and lower limbs separately. A sequential management was required with application of damage control orthopaedics followed by several procedures for reconstruction. NCRIs were predominant and mostly involved the hand among the French soldiers. This review supports the fact that any deployed orthopaedic surgeon should be trained in basic hand surgery and preferably have microsurgical skills. The management of local patients requires the execution of reconstructive surgery and therefore imposes the presence of adequate equipment.
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Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Oct 2023
ReviewSimultaneous ipsilateral floating hip and knee: the double floating extremity-a systematic review and proposal of a treatment algorithm.
To systematically review the currently available existing evidence related to the presentation and management of simultaneous floating hip and knee injuries to identify injury characteristics, treatment strategies, and complications. ⋯ The exact treatment strategy and the follow-up time are not uniform across the included studies; therefore, they are not sufficient to adequately recommend surgical approach, timing of fixation, and fixation method. Our findings warrant the need for better documentation and reporting information about the mode of treatment of simultaneous floating hip and knee injuries.
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Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Oct 2023
ReviewSimultaneous ipsilateral floating hip and knee: the double floating extremity-a systematic review and proposal of a treatment algorithm.
To systematically review the currently available existing evidence related to the presentation and management of simultaneous floating hip and knee injuries to identify injury characteristics, treatment strategies, and complications. ⋯ The exact treatment strategy and the follow-up time are not uniform across the included studies; therefore, they are not sufficient to adequately recommend surgical approach, timing of fixation, and fixation method. Our findings warrant the need for better documentation and reporting information about the mode of treatment of simultaneous floating hip and knee injuries.
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Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Aug 2023
The potential of point-of-care diagnostics to optimise prehospital trauma triage: a systematic review of literature.
In the prehospital care of potentially seriously injured patients resource allocation adapted to injury severity (triage) is a challenging. Insufficiently specified triage algorithms lead to the unnecessary activation of a trauma team (over-triage), resulting in ineffective consumption of economic and human resources. A prehospital trauma triage algorithm must reliably identify a patient bleeding or suffering from significant brain injuries. By supplementing the prehospital triage algorithm with in-hospital established point-of-care (POC) tools the sensitivity of the prehospital triage is potentially increased. Possible POC tools are lactate measurement and sonography of the thorax, the abdomen and the vena cava, the sonographic intracranial pressure measurement and the capnometry in the spontaneously breathing patient. The aim of this review was to assess the potential and to determine diagnostic cut-off values of selected instrument-based POC tools and the integration of these findings into a modified ABCDE based triage algorithm. ⋯ A preliminary version of a modified triage algorithm with hypothetic cut-off values for a trauma team activation was created. However, further studies should be conducted to optimize the final cut-off values in the future. Furthermore, studies need to evaluate the practical application of the modified algorithm in terms of feasibility (e.g. duration of application, technique, etc.) and the effects of the new algorithm on over-triage. Limiting factors are the restriction with the search and the heterogeneity between the studies (e.g. varying measurement devices, techniques etc.).
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Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Aug 2023
ReviewTraumatic brain injury detection performance of the infant scalp score in children younger than 2 years in the pediatric emergency department.
Our study sought to externally validate the Infant Scalp Score (ISS) within an international pediatric emergency department (PED) setting. The ISS for pediatric Closed Head Injury (CHI), includes age, hematoma localization, and size, and has the potential to predict the presence of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) on computed tomography. We aimed to describe a potentially low risk cohort of children younger than 24 months with CHI and scalp hematomas, where clinicians may limit diagnostic radiation exposure to this vulnerable patient population. ⋯ Children with ISS scores of ≥ 5 were noted to have increased rates of both TBI and ciTBI. CHI related scalp hematomas located in the temporal/parietal region or with a size greater than 3 cm were associated with increased rates of TBI. Within the context of this study, ISS scores of 4 or less represented a lower risk for TBI and ciTBI. Future research on this potentially low risk pediatric CHI cohort is needed.