Basic Trauma Life Support and Advanced Trauma Life Support - Research Paper Example

? Differences between Basic Trauma Life Support and Advanced Trauma Life Support Introduction Through the Global Burden of Disease Study, it has been identified that injuries are among the top causes of death and disability worldwide. From the look of the existing statistics, this trend is most likely to increase in the coming years if not properly looked into. Although infectious diseases still lead as the highest cause of deaths in the world, injuries as a cause of death has escalated in the recent years. This has been attributed to the increase a number of diseases to young people, increase in disability cases and a great loss of young productive life, which in turn has brought about socio-economic losses to the society at large. This great loss of life has attracted public interest as well as public health community and civic organizations attention to come up and formulate strategies that can prevent or improve the damages caused by injuries (Cales, 1-8). Differences between Basic Trauma Life Support and Advanced Trauma Life Support Among the strategies that have been formulated to decrease injury burdens are the health care provisions. These have reduced the rate of deaths from injuries as well as the rate of disability caused by these injuries. In the last decade most high income countries have witnessed reductions in trauma mortality of up to 15%-20%. This has been attributed to improved systems of trauma care within the health communities. In many developed countries, health communities have introduced and are implementing trauma life support systems. This is pre-hospital care that includes both the basic trauma life support and advanced trauma life support. This has been due to the fact that most patients with injuries arrive at the hospital by means of private transport and need a lot of pre-hospital care hence it’s being adopted by health communities in many countries (Cales, 1-8). This has also brought about the need for trained ambulance crew who can offer pre-hospital care to the injured patients. It is evident that both the basic trauma life support and advanced trauma life support have helped save a lot of lives as well as disabilities in the last decade and the present day. This has in turn attracted a lot of research on the health sector on the trauma life support methods and their efficiency in the health sector. This paper however is more concerned with noting the difference between the basic trauma life support and the advanced trauma life support as well as those patients that are exposed to basic trauma life support and advanced life support in California (Isenberg and Bissell, 265-270). Empirical studies show that pre-hospital care is classified into two categories. The basic trauma life support and advanced trauma life support. These two categories are mainly differentiated by the methods used in their application. In the case of advanced trauma life support, sophisticated methods such as airway management, intravenous fluids infusions, synchronized cardio version, cardiac monitoring, electrocardiogram interpretation, medications and intubation are used (Klemen and Grmec, 1250-1254). On the other hand, in the cases of basic trauma life support, simple noninvasive methods such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, bleeding control, splinting broken bones, artificial ventilation, basic airway management and administration of oral or rectal medications are used to prevent further injuries. In the case of transportation of a patient, advanced trauma life support requires a ground ambulance or a helicopter with physicians or paramedics (Lee et al., 815-819). On the other hand, basic trauma life support can be applied within any means of transportation as well as given by paramedics or emergency medical technicians since it does not require the sophisticated methods used in the advanced trauma life support. Although basic trauma life support does not use the same methods as advanced trauma life support, advanced trauma life support does use the same methods used in basic trauma life support among others that are invasive and sophisticated (Stiell, et al., 647-656). Within the health communities, emergency care has always been categorized in two strategies. Scoop and run and stay and play. Scoop and run is where a patient is rushed to a high level hospital to be stabilized with minimum pre-hospital treatment, mainly basic trauma life support treatment. On the other hand stay and play is where the patient is stabilized at the site of the injury before being transported to the hospital for further treatment hence advanced trauma life support treatment. However the merit of applying these pre-hospital care varies from one nation to the other as it also varies on which patient accredits the advance treatment or the basic treatment of trauma life support. In California, mostly the scoop and run strategy is favored; although, in other continents like the Europe, stay we play approach is favored (Liberman and Roudsari, 691-696). Among the factors that determine the type of strategy to be used include; the amount of population in an operational area, geographical variables such as lakes, rivers and mountains, quality and network of roads, location and level of hospital, distribution of accident risks in the operational area, education of the personnel, amount, distribution, dispatching and quality of emergency units, communication technology such as mobile phones, telemedicine among others and the development of the traffic in terms of quality of vehicles and roads and traffic jams. Although California as a state prefers the basic trauma life support strategy, these factors make the emergency care not constant in any place, the treatment chain changes from time to time depending on the situation. It can call for different procedures at night and it might require a totally different situation during daytime (Isenberg and Bissell, 265-270). Although the debate to the merits pertaining to these strategies is still ongoing to this date, there are cases where research has shown that some cases should be handled in particular ways in accordance with the two existing pre-hospital care (Stiell, et al., 2156-2164). The nature of the injury to the patient also determines the type of pre-hospital care the patient receives. In the case of blunt head injury, empirical records show that advanced trauma life support is more efficient when applied than the basic trauma life support. Respiratory distress also favored advanced trauma life support treatment to basic trauma life support within the California state. When a patient is suffering from diseases like the epilepsy, the patient is most likely to respond to advanced trauma life support treatment than to basic trauma life support treatment (Stiell, et al., 647-656). This is however not the same on all cases, advanced trauma life support treatment seems to work best with an experienced physician in the staff. In the case that it is administered with inexperienced personnel, the results might be catastrophic. However, in other studies, there is always no difference that is detected between the applications of the two types of pre-hospital care to the patient’s injuries. This has also been attributed to the fact that there exists little research findings on procedures of emergency care. Therefore; it remains a subject of speculation depending on the situation, extent of the injury and the place of the actual injury (Liberman and Roudsari, 691-696). Even though both the pre-hospital care strategies have in the end been attributed to a common goal which is reducing the extent of injuries on a patient, they have also shared in some cases almost the same procedures depending on which nation they are being carried out (Lee et al., 815-819). However, in most nations and cases, advanced trauma life support has proved that it is more complex than the basic trauma life support process. For this reason, advanced trauma life support actually requires a well-trained and registered nurse who can perform an intubation by using hypnotics and muscle relaxants, which despite being complex are necessary in the advanced trauma life support treatment (Isenberg and Bissell, 265-270). Conclusion There has been active research on the pre-hospital care to compare the effectiveness of both the basic and advanced trauma life support methods but to date no final conclusion has been drawn yet. The concepts that are associated with both basic and advanced trauma life support differ from one nation to the other. Every concept and implementation of the two categories of pre-hospital care is dependent on local political, cultural, geographical and economic factors. There are places where some medical procedures are classified as advanced trauma life support methods and there are places where the same methods are used also as basic trauma life support methods. This has made the comparison between these two pre-hospital care methods more difficult since they both with time have developed towards greater sophistication depending on the nation in question. However, it can be noted that the main difference between the basic trauma life support and advanced trauma life support mainly depends on the mode of transportation of the patient as well as the type of emergency care that is given in the hospital. Works Cited Cales RH.Trauma mortality in Orange County: the effects of implementation of a regional trauma system. Annals of Emergency Medicine 1984; 13:1-8 Isenberg, D., L. and R., Bissell. “Does advanced life support provide benefits to patients? A literature review” Prehospital Disaster Med. 20 (2005): 265-270. Klemen P and Grmec S. Effect of pre-hospital advanced life support with rapid sequence intubation on outcome of severe traumatic brain injury. Acta Anaesthesiol Scand 2006, 50:1250-4 Lee A, Garner A, Fearnside M. and Harrison K. Level of prehospital care and risk of mortality in patients with and without severe blunt head injury. Injury 2003, 34:815-9 Liberman, M and B., S., Roudsari. "Prehospital trauma care: what do we really know?" Curr Opin Crit Care (2007): 691-696. Stiell IG, Spaite DW, Field B, Nesbitt LP, Munkley D, Maloney J, Dreyer J, Toohey LL, Campeau T, Dagnone E, Lyver M, Wells GA, and OPALS Study Group: Advanced life support for out-of-hospital respiratory distress. N Engl J Med 2007, 356:2156-64 Stiell IG, Wells GA, Field B, Spaite DW, Nesbitt LP, De Maio VJ, Nichol G, Cousineau D, Blackburn J, Munkley D, Luinstra-Toohey L, Campeau T, Dagnone E, and Lyver M. Ontario Prehospital Advanced Life Support Study Group: Advanced cardiac life support in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. N Engl J Med 2004, 351: 647-56. Read More