Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2010
Objectives
Describe planning and implementation of a massive transfusion protocol (MTP) for a large urban trauma service.
Stress the coordination and education effort involving many hospital services prior to introduction of the protocol.
Review the available data on clotting function during rapid exsanguination, and the optimal distribution of blood products for fluid resuscitation (packed red blood cells, plasma, platelets, cryoprecipitate, and recombinant Factor VIIa) during ongoing blood loss.
Discuss the difficulty of designing research in trauma patients to demonstrate significant benefit to these patients caused by the MTP.
Present preliminary outcome data using the MTP (compared with prospectively gathered historical control data collected in the year prior to introduction of the MTP), which shows a decrease in the number of blood products required for fluid resuscitation in surgery, implying some benefit in trauma patients by providing control of coagulopathy.
INTRODUCTION
The design and implementation of a massive transfusion protocol (MTP) for use in trauma care in a large urban hospital is described. The MTP provides rapidly bleeding patients with automatic regular shipments of blood products to facilitate fluid resuscitation during emergency care and surgery. Design of the protocol, particularly the choice of ratio between packed red blood cells, plasma, and platelets at each stage of resuscitation, is discussed based on results of recent studies concerning the need for volume support, oxygen delivery, and coagulation support during ongoing blood loss and surgery.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.