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- For the Nintendo video game series, see Trauma Center Series
A trauma center is a hospital equipped to perform as a casualty receiving station for the emergency medical services by providing the best possible medical care for traumatic injuries 24 hours a day, 365 days per year. Trauma centers were established as the medical establishment realized that such injuries often require immediate and complex surgery to save the patient.
In order to qualify as a trauma center, a hospital must have a number of complex capabilities including a well-stocked emergency department, a high-quality intensive care ward, and an operating room staffed around the clock. A trauma service is led by a team of trauma surgeons, including specialists such as neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons. ER Docs are an optional helper group. The team has immediate access to advanced diagnostic equipment such as a computed tomography (CT) scanner. Most importantly are the surgical specialists who can stop bleeding and stem infection. Surgeons are the main component in trauma centers that save lives through surgery and inpatient critical care. A trauma center may have a helipad for receiving patients by MEDEVAC and usually has well-developed contingency plans for disasters.
Trauma centers have a limited number of beds, and can be limited as well by the amount of blood available for use in transfusion or surgery. Like other hospitals, trauma centers overwhelmed by patients during a disaster may be forced to close their doors and send incoming patients to other regional care facilities.
The operation of a trauma center is extremely expensive. Some areas are under-served by trauma centers because of this expense (for example, Harborview Medical Center in Seattle serves the states of Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska). In Florida, Orlando Regional Medical Center, built to serve five counties, serves more than twenty. Still, in many cases, persons injured in remote areas and brought to a trauma center by helicopter can receive faster and better care than a person injured in a city and taken to a normal hospital by ground ambulance.
In the United States, trauma centers are ranked in four categories, from a limited care facilities in Level III up to comprehensive service in Level I centers. Some centers specialize in adult or pediatric care.
The concept of a trauma center was developed at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the 1960s and 1970s by heart surgeon and shock researcher R Adams Cowley, who founded what became the Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore, Maryland. The first trauma center in the United States opened at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Illinois, in 1966. [http://www.ccbhs.org/MILESTONES/part2screen.pdf
See also
See also
"Trauma center"