Summer is a busy season for trauma anesthesiologists

A guest column by the American Society of Anesthesiologists, exclusive to KevinMD.com. Summer is immortalized in popular culture for good reasons — no other season can match it for the variety of fun and exciting activities it brings. Unfortunately, that variety of activities and the large volume of people enjoying them inevitably lead to accidents and mishaps of all kinds. The summer months (May through August) show a significant increase in unintentional injury and deaths, particularly for those aged 0 to 14 years. Thankfully, there are many skilled people always at the ready to treat the injured. Trauma anesthesiologists specialize in the acute management of the widest variety of patients imaginable — from car accident victims, to victims of violence, to those suffering sports injuries. And our methods continue to improve — treating severely injured patients at major trauma centers reduces mortality by 25 percent. Let’s take a look at some of the cases we might treat on a given day. And finally, let’s be careful our there! Memorial Day An 18-year-old high school student celebrating senior week at the beach “catches a wave” body surfing. The force of the wave as he hits the shore flips him over, disrupting ligaments in his neck resulting in a complete cervical spine injury. His friends drag him from the water and rush him to the closest trauma center. A trauma anesthesiologist performs an urgent fiberoptic intubation for respiratory distres...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Emergency Surgery Source Type: blogs