Word: traumas
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...after waiting 5 1/2 hours for a chest X ray; she was never given oxygen or an EKG. At Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center, an 18-year-old woman who needed a tracheotomy had her throat inadvertently slit and both jugular veins cut by the hospital's trauma doctors. Despite massive bleeding, she managed to recover...
...full when the Trans Am nearly crashed into the emergency room. The driver, who had been shot in the neck, lost consciousness as he approached the hospital and ran into a retaining wall just out front. Five more feet and he would have landed in the waiting room. The trauma team dragged him out of the car, raced him into the emergency room, cut off his clothes and tried to use suction equipment to get the blood out of his lungs. A thoracic surgeon was called in to locate the bullet, which had entered his Adam's apple and been...
...crisis is all the more ironic in light of the revolutionary advances in trauma care during the past decade. A generation ago, emergency rooms were dumping grounds for bad doctors and training grounds for young ones. But the experience of two world wars, Korea and especially Vietnam taught doctors that saving injured patients depended as much on speed as on skill. Doctors refer to "the golden hour" after a trauma, before irreversible shock sets in, when lifesaving treatment is most likely to succeed. Beginning in the early '80s, states organized themselves into trauma networks and began tailoring training programs...
...that less money should be spent on highly specialized care -- patients with terminal conditions, babies born with multiple defects who are not expected to live long, elderly patients in need of organ transplants. "We have to let some babies die, some old people die," says Dr. John West, a trauma-care expert at the University of California at Irvine. "We have to look at the quality of life, and we have to look at the return on our health-care buck. You just can't keep everyone alive forever...
...Highland General Hospital in Oakland, Chuck Nacke found a horrific scene. Both trauma rooms were full for several hours. One doctor, soaked with sweat, massaged the hearts of two patients and later almost climbed onto the chest of a third in an attempt to restart his heartbeat. In the parking area outside, a car pulled up, a door opened and an inert body was dropped off. As the car drove away, nurses hurriedly wheeled the abandoned person inside, where he was treated. Staff members, says Nacke, are "stretched to the limit 24 hours...