Longer Prehospital Time May Be Associated with Higher Mortality After Trauma

Knowing that trauma centers offer definitive therapy for victims of severe trauma, prehospital providers must delicately balance whether life-saving interventions should be performed on scene (thereby delaying transport) or en route (thereby adding technical complexity) or be deferred until hospital arrival (thereby sacrificing any time-associated benefits).

Researchers analyzed the association between total prehospital time and all-cause mortality for 10,126 injured patients cared for by physician-staffed ambulances in two regions in France from 2009 to 2016. Overall mortality was 9.6%. Most patients had total prehospital times of 30 to 119 minutes. After adjusting for age, sex, systolic blood pressure, Glasgow Coma Scale score, and Injury …