The impact of a new regional air ambulance service on a large general hospital

Background: Helicopter air ambulance crews are influenced in their selection of the destination hospital for their patients by several factors including: distance from the scene; facilities, on site specialties, and senior cover of the receiving hospital; and the proximity of the helicopter landing area to the emergency department (ED). Only a limited number of hospitals have landing sites adjacent to the ED from which patients can be taken directly into the department (primary landing sites). Helicopter crews will often elect to over fly hospitals that do not have primary landing sites because secondary land transfers will add delays in delivering patients. Birmingham Heartlands Hospital has an elevated helideck adjacent to the ED. In October 2003, the Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance (WNAA) service was launched; the hospital sits on the western periphery of the area served by the service. Methods: Prospective data was collated on all patients brought by WNAA to Heartlands Hospital between 1 October 2003 and 31 August 2004. Results: In the 10 month period after the launch of the service, the helicopter delivered 83 patients to the ED; 74 of these were "off patch". This additional workload generated 163 ward days, 19 operative procedures, and 85 intensive care unit, high dependency unit, or coronary care unit days. The direct costs of this additional workload approached £160 000. Conclusions: In future discussions on the cost effectiveness of air ambulances, it will be important to consider both the direct and indirect costs to the receiving hospitals arising from the redistribution of emergency workload. Abbreviations: ED, emergency department; HDU, high dependency unit; HEMS, helicopter emergency medical service; ICU, intensive care unit; ISS, injury severity score; WNAA, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire Air Ambulance; WMCAA, West Midlands County Air Ambulance

Wounding patterns and human performance in knife attacks: optimising the protection provided by knife-resistant body armour

Stab attacks generate high loads,1 and to defeat them, armour needs to be of a certain thickness and stiffness.2,3 Slash attacks produce much lower loads and armour designed to defeat them can be far lighter and more flexible.Methods and subjects: Phase 1: Human performance in slash attacks: 87 randomly selected students at the Royal Military College of Science were asked to make one slash attack with an instrumented blade on a vertically mounted target. No instructions on how to slash the target were given. The direction, contact forces and velocity of each attack were recorded. Phase 2: Clinical experience with edged weapon attacks: The location and severity of all penetrating injuries in patients attending the Glasgow Royal Infirmary between 1993 and 1996 were charted on anatomical figures.Results Phase 1: Two types of human slash behaviour were evident: a ‘chop and drag’ blow and a ‘sweep motion’ type of attack. ‘Chop and drag’ attacks had higher peak forces and velocities than sweep attacks. Shoulder to waist blows (diagonal) accounted for 82% of attacks, 71% of attackers used a long diagonal slash with an average cut length of 34 cm and 11% used short diagonal attacks with an average cut length of 25 cm. Only 18% of attackers slashed across the body (short horizontal); the average measured cut length of this type was 28 cm. The maximum peak force for the total sample population was 212 N; the maximum velocity was 14.88 m s−1. The 95 percentile force for the total sample population was 181 N and the velocity was 9.89 m s−1. Phase 2: 431 of the 500 patients had been wounded with edged weapons. The average number of wounds sustained by victims in knife assaults was 2.4. The distribution of wounds by frequency and severity are presented.Conclusions Anti-slash protection is required for the arms, neck, shoulders, and thighs. The clinical experience of knife-attack victims provides information on the relative vulnerabilities of different regions of the body. It is anticipated that designing a tunic-type of Police uniform that is inherently stab and slash resistant will eventually replace the current obvious and often bulky extra protective vest. Attempts at making a combined garment will need to be guided by ergonomic considerations and field testing. A similar anatomical regional risk model might also be appropriate in the design of anti-ballistic armour and combined anti-ballistic and knife-resistant armour

National survey of variations in practice in the prevention of surgical site infections in adult cardiac surgery, United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland

Background: Currently no national standards exist for the prevention of surgical site infection (SSI) in cardiac surgery. SSI rates range from 1% to 8% between centres. Aim: The aim of this study was to explore and characterize variation in approaches to SSI prevention in the UK and the Republic of Ireland (ROI). Methods: Cardiac surgery centres were surveyed using electronic web-based questionnaires to identify variation in SSI prevention at the level of both institution and consultant teams. Surveys were developed and undertaken through collaboration between the Cardiothoracic Interdisciplinary Research Network (CIRN), Public Health England (PHE) and the National Cardiac Benchmarking Collaborative (NCBC) to encompass routine pre-, intra- and postoperative practice. Findings: Nineteen of 38 centres who were approached provided data and included responses from 139 consultant teams. There was no missing data from those centres that responded. The results demonstrated substantial variation in over 40 aspects of SSI prevention. These included variation in SSI surveillance, reporting of SSI infection rates to external bodies, utilization of SSI risk prediction tools, and the use of interventions such as sternal support devices and gentamicin impregnated sponges. Conclusion: Measured variation in SSI prevention in cardiac centres across the UK and ROI is evidence of clinical uncertainty as to best practice, and has identified areas for quality improvement as well as knowledge gaps to be addressed by future research

Immediate thoracotomy for penetrating injuries: Ten years' experience at a Dutch level I trauma center

Background: An emergency department thoracotomy (EDT) or an emergency thoracotomy (ET) in the operating theater are both beneficial in selected patients following thoracic penetrating injuries. Since outcome-descriptive European studies are lacking, the aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate ten years of experience at a Dutch level I trauma center. Method: Data on patients who underwent an immediate thoracotomy after sustaining a penetrating thoracic injury between October 2000 and January 2011 were collected from the trauma registry and hospital files. Descriptive and univariate analyses were performed. Results: Among 56 patients, 12 underwent an EDT and 44 an ET. Forty-six patients sustained one or multiple stab wounds, versus ten with one or multiple gunshot wounds. Patients who had undergone an EDT had a lower GCS (p < 0. 001), lower pre-hospital RTS and hospital triage RTS (p < 0. 001 and p = 0. 009, respectively), and a lower SBP (p = 0. 038). A witnessed loss of signs of life generally occurred in EDT patients and was accompanied by 100 % mortality. Survival following EDT was 25 %, which was significantly lower than in the ET group (75 %; p = 0. 002). Survivors had lower ISS (p = 0. 011), lower rates of pre-hospital (p = 0. 031) and hospital (p = 0. 003) hemodynamic instability, and a lower prevalence of concomitant abdominal injury (p = 0. 002). Conclusion: The overall survival rate in our study was 64 %. The outcome of immediate thoracotomy performed in this level I trauma center was similar to those obtained in high-incidence regions like the US and South Africa. This suggests that trauma units where immediate thoracotomies are not part of the daily routine can achieve similar results, if properly trained

An email audit of prehospital doctor activity in an area of the West Midlands

Methods: A retrospective review of data collected by a prehospital organisation's email based internet group. Results: Nearly half of prehospital doctor calls were to road traffic accidents and nearly half of these were "serious". Road traffic accidents involving pedestrians, trees, and motorcycles often resulted in fatalities. Doctors frequently performed medical interventions at scene. Midazolam and ketamine were administered commonly; the indications for their use varied. At two cases on scene anaesthesia was maintained for over an hour with ketamine. Conclusions: There remains a role for prehospital doctors. Email provides a very useful medium to share information and facilitate audit among a group of doctors who do not meet on a regular basis or work in the same institution. A computerised proforma to be filled by doctors after each prehospital call is proposed in an attempt to standardise and gather information for future audit and discussion

Impact of the Department of Health initiative to equip and train acute trusts to manage chemically contaminated casualties

Background: Before 1999, there was no national model or standard doctrine for managing casualties from chemical incidents in the UK. A Department of Health (DoH) initiative to prepare the National Health Service (NHS) for chemical incidents was launched in the same year. This led to the distribution of an NHS standard chemical personal protective equipment suit (CPPE) together with a new single half day training package (Structured Approach to Chemical Casualties (SACC)) in 2001. Objectives: To assess the impact of the DoH initiative on acute hospital and ambulance trusts. To identify deficiencies in the design and operational deployment of the new CPPE, training initiative, and decontamination procedures at hospital level. Method: A survey to assess progress in specific areas of chemical incident preparedness and two simulated incidents with "live" chemically contaminated casualties conducted in two acute trusts. Umpires evaluated the operational performance against DoH SACC standards. Results: There has been marked improvement in many aspects of preparedness for chemical incidents since the original National Focus survey. Some deficiencies remain and this study identified areas for further work. In the live casualty exercises, hospital staff complied well with SACC protocols. Some practical difficulties were encountered with the deployment of the CPPE and in some aspects of the operational response, leading to some delays in the delivery of care to the casualties and to the integrity of the uncontaminated (clean) zones within the hospitals. Conclusion: Problems with the design and deployment of the CPPE, together with training difficulties have been fed back into the planning and development process