Doctors Aren ’t Getting Better at Treating Shooting Victims Even As Gun Deaths Rise

In November, after the American College of Physicians published a position paper on firearms and safety in a medical journal, the National Rifle Association publicly warned doctors to “stay in their lane”. Surgeons around the U.S. responded by posting grisly photos and stories of treating shooting victims—and the hashtag #ThisIsOurLane was born. Now, a new study published in JAMA Surgery finds that people who go to the hospital after being shot die from their injuries just as often as they ever have, despite improvements in survival for other types of trauma victims. The researchers compared the numbers of people who left the hospital after gunshot wounds with those who left after car accidents. The victims of both types of trauma are injured by external forces and arrive at the hospital in an ambulance requiring urgent care, usually by a trauma team. Surgeons often engage with both types of patients and care for them in similar ways, says Dr. Robert Tessler, lead author of the study and a surgery resident at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Surgery. Yet although they are treated similarly, the percentage of victims who leave the hospital alive in each case is quite different. Improvements in trauma and surgical procedures, as well as preventive policies, have meant that many more people survive after car accidents in 2013 than survived in 2003, the study says. But the number of shooting victims whom hospitals cannot save has not changed in the sa...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized public health Source Type: news