-
Advanced Trauma Life Support
- Rapid assessment
- Rususcitation
-
ATLS concept:
- 1. Treat greatest threat to life first
- 2. Lack of diagnosis should not stop treatment
- 3. Detailed history not essential in acutely injured
-
Primary Survey
-
A - Airway with cervical spine protection
- Assess airway patency
- Can you hear me?
- Facial fractures?
- Foreign bodies in moth?
- Chin lift, jaw thrust.
- Assume C-spine injury
- Manual in-line immobilisation
- Immobilisation devices
- Oxygenation
-
B- Breathing
- Assess Ventilation (lungs, chest wall and diaphragm)
- Look
- is chest wall rising and falling equally
- bruises/cuts?
- Feel
- trachea
- Percuss
- chest wall sound?
- Listen
- air entry in nose/mouth?
- Oxygenation
-
C - Circulation - control external bleeding
- Assess blood volume and CO
- level of consciousness
- skin colour
- pale
- pink
- pulse rate
- within parameter for age
- Stop external bleeding
- direct pressure
- limb elevation
- bleeding in pelvis?
- Get intravenous access
- into cubital fossa/ neck
- for fluid replacement
- Adequate perfusion
-
D - Disability or neurological status
- Assess neurological status
(Glasgow Coma Scale)
- A - Alert
- V - Vocalising
- P - Painful stimuli
- U- Unresponsive
- Assess pupils
- size, equality, reactivity
-
E- Exposure (undress) and Envrionment (control temperature)
- Remove all clothing
- Prevent hypothermia
- blankets
- warm IV fluids
- warm room
-
Secondary Survey
-
AMPLE history
- A - Allergies
- allergic to any medicines?
- M - Medications
- on medications like Warfarin?
- P- Past history
- cancer? heart attacks?
- L- Last meal
- anaesthetics
- E - Events
- trip? RTA?
- Head to toe examination
- 'Tubes and fingers in every orifice'
-
Adjuncts to surveys in ATLS
- ECG
- Urinary and gastric catheter
- Pulse oximetry
- Arterial blood gases
- Blood test
- Blood pressure, pulse rate, respiratory rate
-
Xrays: trauma series
- Chest/ pelvis
- Definition: protocol for the management of trauma victims
- designed to maximise management in the first "golden hour" following trauma, and thus ensure an optimal long term outcome
-
Trimodal Distribution of Death
-
1st peak: Minutes.
-
50% - immediate death
- catastrophic head, neck, major vessel injury
-
2nd peak: hours (the 'golden hour')
- 40% - late
- golden hour =time during which there is the highest likelihood that prompt medical treatment will prevent death
-
3rd peak: days
- 10% - first day
-
Shock
- Definition: 'A clinical state in which there is inadequate tissue oxygenation due to decreased organ perfusion'
- Recognise its presence, identify probable cause, treat
-
Basic Cardiac Physiology
-
CO = SV x HR
- = volume of blood pumped by heart per minute
-
SV
- Volume of blood pumped with each heart beat
- preload - venous return
- afterload-resistance to forward flow
- contractility - myocardial muscle stretch (Starling's law)
-
Symtpoms
- Shaky
- Sweaty
- Anxious
- Dizzy
- Tachycardia
- Vision
- Weak
- Headaches
-
Remember compensatory signs
- 1. Tachycardia = pulse rate > 100bpm
- 2. Progressive vasoconstriction = cool peripheries
- 3. Increase in diastolic BP = pulse pressure decreases
- Injured patient + tachycardia + cool = shock until proven otherwise
-
Haemorrhagic shock
-
hypovolaemic
- = acute loss of circulating blood volume
-
Four classes of haemorrhagic shock
(numbers like tennis)
-
Class I - 15% blood volume loss
- 0-750ml
- pulse - normal/slight elevation
- peripheries - warm
- pulse pressure - normal
-
Class Ii - 15-30% blood volume loss
- 1500ml
- pulse > 100
- peripheries - warm... anxious
- pulse pressure - decreases (diastolic BP increases)
-
Class III - 30-40% blood volume loss
- 1500-2000ml
- pulse > 120
- peripheries - cool
- pulse pressure - decreases (systolic BP decreases)
- compensatory mechanisms now falling...
-
Class IV - 40% blood volume loss
- >2000ml
- pulse > 140
- peripheries - cold and pale
- pulse pressure - very narrow (diastolic BP unrecordable)
- but volume replacement guided by clinical response,
not by classification of shock
-
Non- Haemorrhagic shock
- cardiogenic
-
neurogenic
- spinal injury
- septic
- anaphylactic
-
Life Threatening injuries after trauma
-
Tension pneumothorax
- decompress/relieve pressure in chest
- small hole in chest that goes through chest wall
- pressure outside increases relative to intrathorax pressure and collapse lung
- air flow continues into thoracic cavity
- trachea displacement away from cavity
-
Open pnemothorax
- flap valve
- decompress less than for tension pneumothorax
-
Massive haemothorax
- blood in pleural space
- Cardiac Tamponade
- Fractures