HEMS - November 3, 2015 by Cliff Reid
"ILCOR (the International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation) has now completed its five-yearly consensus review and the European Resuscitation Council (ERC) and American Heart Association (AHA) have published their updated 2015 guidelines on cardiac arrest management, including traumatic cardiac arrest. The Australian and New Zealand Resuscitation Councils usually publish their guidelines a bit later, which do not tend to differ significantly from the European & American versions.
The ERC guideline for traumatic cardiac arrest management1 is available for downloadhere. It is reassuringly up-to-date and constitutes a bold step away from traditional approaches. For us, the heartening finding is that it is entirely consistent with our operating procedures on traumatic cardiac arrest and haemorrhage control. Here is the algorithm:
- Absence of nihilism
- Lack of priority given to chest compressions
- Proactivity regarding commencing resuscitation, and discontinuing based on response and sonographic cardiac standstill
- Application of aggressive interventions in the prehospital setting
- Haemorrhage control measures
- Open thoracostomy in preference to needle methods or chest tube insertion
- Resuscitative thoracotomy in penetrating traumatic cardiac arrest
- Prehospital ultrasound in the shocked patient"
http://sydneyhems.com/2015/11/03/new-traumatic-cardiac-arrest-guideline/