TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2014//
TI  - Evaluating initial spine trauma response: injury time to trauma center in PA, USA
JO  - Journal of clinical neuroscience
A1  - Harrop, James S.
A1  - Ghobrial, George M.
A1  - Chitale, Rohan
A1  - Krespan, Kelly
A1  - Odorizzi, Laura
A1  - Fried, Tristan
A1  - Maltenfort, Mitchell
A1  - Cohen, Murray
A1  - Vaccaro, Alexander
SP  - 1725
EP  - 1729
VL  - 21
IS  - 10
N2  - Historical perceptions regarding the severity of traumatic spinal cord injury has led to considerable disparity in triage to tertiary care centers. This article retrospectively reviews a large regional trauma database to analyze whether the diagnosis of spinal trauma affected patient transfer timing and patterns. The Pennsylvania Trauma database was retrospectively reviewed. All acute trauma patient entries for level I and II centers were categorized for diagnosis, mechanism, and location of injury, analyzing transportation modality and its influence on time of arrival. A total of 1162 trauma patients were identified (1014 blunt injuries, 135 penetrating injuries and 12 other) with a mean transport time of 3.9hours and a majority of patients arriving within 7hours (>75%). Spine trauma patients had the longest mean arrival time (5.2hours) compared to blunt trauma (4.2hours), cranial neurologic injuries (4.35hours), and penetrating injuries (2.13hours, p<0.0001). There was a statistically significant correlation between earlier arrivals and both cranial trauma (p=0.0085) and penetrating trauma (p<0.0001). The fastest modality was a fire rescue (0.93hours) or police (0.63hours) vehicle with Philadelphia County (1.1hour) having the quickest arrival times. Most trauma patients arrived to a specialty center within 7hours of injury. However subsets analysis revealed that spine trauma patients had the greatest transit times. Present research trials for spinal cord injuries suggest earlier intervention may lead to improved recovery. Therefore, it is important to focus on improvement of the transportation triage system for traumatic spinal patients.<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 0967-5868
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jocn.2014.03.011
ID  - ref1
ER  -