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Despite emergency medicine now being firmly established as a specialty in nearly every major trauma center in North America, and the requirement by the Residency Review Committee for Emergency Medicine that EM trainees “must have significant opportunities to direct major resuscitations,” lingering debate remains as to which specialty should run major trauma resuscitations. In 1999, the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma wrote that “the active involvement of the trauma surgeon is crucial to the optimal care of the injured patient in all phases of resuscitation.” However, no evidence supported this contention either then or now.
Researchers compared outcomes of resuscitations led by nonsurgeons (emergency physicians and anesthesi…