UPDATE: Is trying to resuscitate trauma patients with prehospital cardiac arrest futile? Conventional wisdom was that it was futile because the expectation of survival was too low. Newer research shows survival rates may be higher than we historically believed. However, …
BLUF: “Normal” values vary by age, gender, temperature (both environmental and casualty’s), and lighting conditions. Different providers will see different durations of refill time. With all these adjustments and limitations of how normal is defined, as well as no standard …
Typically, intra-osseous access is performed either in the proximal humerus or proximal tibia in the civilian setting and sternally in the military. A recent study of 2016 US prehospital IO placements in adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrests included 888 IOs in …
BLUF*: For the pulse oximeter’s O2 saturation reading to be valid, the device must also be consistently identifying the patient’s pulse. If the pulse waveform or notation isn’t steady, the oxygen reading isn’t valid. Fingertip oxygen saturation monitors are small, …
Although not as convenient as evaluating the “Go / No Go” presence of a casualty’s radial pulse, their “shock index” is a much more sophisticated snapshot of their hypovolemic status. Shock index is a ratio of the trauma patient’s heart …
Triage systems are used by prehospital providers to “sort” casualties into essentially those who are dead or will likely die despite treatment, those with injuries that don’t really require prehospital treatment, and those with injuries that are immediately life-threatening and …