PMID: 12055509
Issn Print: 0020-5907
Publication Date: 2002/07/01
What's New in Trauma in the Past 10 Years
Excerpt
The management of patients following injury has undergone a substantial evolution over the past 10 years. Our understanding of the physiology of injury and blood loss continues to be refined. This has allowed us to dispel several myths that were long-held dogmas in the area of resuscitation. Improved technology has provided us with more discriminating diagnostic modalities, allowing us to streamline the evaluation process and making important diagnoses earlier. Noninvasive or minimally invasive technology has also evolved, bringing exciting new methods of hemostasis. In addition, we are beginning to understand the physiologic and economic consequences of nontherapeutic exploratory surgery and have become much more selective in our management. As our understanding has increased, so has our ability to cull out special patients, such as older patients, and tailor management strategies specifically for them.
Injury management continues to develop quickly and profoundly. Perhaps the most important lesson we have learned over the last 10 years is that we must expand our horizons and reinvestigate those unproven beliefs that have governed many of our treatment decisions. In this chapter, we will describe some of the most important advances made in the field of trauma management over the last 10 years.
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