Articles: trauma.
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Review Observational Study
Imaging findings in penetrating injuries in the paediatric population - Experience from a major trauma Centre.
The primary objective of this study is to assess common sites of injury and the associated imaging findings in penetrating injuries. We pay particular attention to gluteal, anterior abdominal wall and junctional zone injuries. The aim is to highlight areas of diagnostic uncertainty and discrepancy between imaging and surgical findings, to improve review areas in trauma reporting. ⋯ Gluteal injuries are common and although the overall morbidity of these cases is low, these patients are at risk of serious and life threatening consequences such as vascular and rectal injury and it is imperative that these complications are considered and ruled out via dual phase CT or direct visualization. Anterior abdominal wall and junctional zone injuries are less common, but lead to greater morbidity and also greater diagnostic uncertainty. The use of other salient findings as described in this report can aid diagnostic accuracy and reduce discrepancies.
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Comparative Study
Comparison of continuous vital signs data analysis versus venous lactate for the prediction of lifesaving interventions in patients with traumatic shock.
Introduction: The prehospital environment is fraught with operational constraints, making it difficult to assess the need for resources such as lifesaving interventions (LSI) for adults with traumatic injuries. While invasive methods such as lactate have been found to be highly predictive for estimating injury severity and resource requirements, noninvasive methods, to include continuous vital signs ( VS ), have the potential to provide prognostic information that can be quickly acquired, interpreted, and incorporated into decision making. In this work, we hypothesized that an analysis of continuous VS would have predictive capacity comparable to lactate and other laboratory tests for the prediction of injury severity, need for LSIs and intensive care unit admission. ⋯ The model using all laboratory data yielded the highest sensitivity and sensitivity (AUROC, 0.77; 95% CI, 0.74-0.81). Discussion: The results from this study suggest that continuous VS obtained from autonomous monitors in an aeromedical environment may be helpful for predicting LSIs and the critical care requirements for traumatically injured adults. The collection and use of noninvasively obtained physiological data during the early stages of prehospital care may be useful for in developing user-friendly early warning systems for identifying potentially unstable trauma patients.
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The Extended Focused Assessment with Sonography for Trauma (E-FAST) is a diagnostic ultrasound technique used in hospital and pre-hospital settings for patients with torso trauma. While E-FAST is common in emergency departments, its pre-hospital use is less routine. This study aims to establish a set of variables for designing studies on pre-hospital E-FAST through a Delphi consensus process involving international experts. ⋯ This Delphi consensus study presents a list of 32 variables for future research studies concerning the use of E-FAST ultrasound in pre-hospital settings. The results of this study are significant as they provide a standardized set of variables that will facilitate the comparison of data obtained from various studies. This will ultimately contribute to the advancement of pre-hospital E-FAST research and practice.