Effect of physician-staffed helicopter emergency medical service on blunt trauma patient survival and prehospital care

Abstract

The physicians treated the patients more aggressively, but it did not delay the arrival at the hospital. A beneficial effect of this aggressive treatment or direct transport to a university hospital could not be seen in the immediate physiological parameters or later health-related quality of life. The physician-staffed helicopter emergency medical service was not beneficial to blunt trauma patients in this setting.

On-scene times and critical care interventions for an aeromedical retrieval service

“…These data support the assertion that when critical care physicians undertake secondary retrieval, the time spent with the patient is time spent delivering CCI to optimise the patient for transfer. The data collected in this study show a longer time spent on-scene during a secondary retrieval than total on-scene times for primary retrieval quoted in literature 3 4 6 8 12…”

Association Between Helicopter vs Ground Emergency Medical Services and Survival for Adults With Major Trauma

“…The effect of clinical interventions remains unknown, and in some studies, the presence of a physician failed to confer a survival or quality-of-life benefit. 5,36 Clustering of patients within each trauma center might be another source of residual bias; previous work with the NTDB has shown that failure to account for clustering may lead to artificially narrow confidence intervals. 30 We attempted to control for this by using deidentified facility identifiers in both our propensity score analysis and generalized estimating equations analysis.…”

Trauma Care in Germany: An Inclusive System

“…With this system, the mortality could be reduced, and if mandatory procedures were required (eg, intubation), there was a substantial time reduction as substantiated by findings from other countries [7,26]. Iirola et al [29] reviewed the importance of physician-staffed helicopter emergency services and found a more extensive treatment by the physician-staffed services without increasing scene time. This was substantiated by Garner et al [19] who also found a substantially lower mortality.…”