The
Advanced Trauma life Support approach
Following the death of his wife and serious injury to his three children
in an air crash in the l970s, an American orthopaedic surgeon, Dr James Styner,
introduced a structured trauma management training programme which was soon
adopted by the American College of Surgeons and developed into the ATLS
educational package now in widespread use in the UK and in 23 other countries.
To date, over 200 000 doctors have been trained and the approach is now regarded
as the gold standard in early trauma initial assessment and resuscitation.
The
philosophy
ATLS management is based on a ‘treat lethal injury first, then
reassess and treat again’ strategy. The steps in management are given below.
ATLS
component steps
• Primary survey — identify what is killing the patient
• Resuscitation — treat what is killing the patient
•Secondary survey —
proceed to identify all other injuries
• Definitive care — develop a definitive management plan
The
philosophy is based on the urgency and crisis surrounding early management of
a multiply injured patient whose life is in danger. Underpinning this approach
is the quite recent realisation that death following injury is a function of
time and occurs in a predictable and measurable way.
Dr
Donald Trunkey’s demonstration of the trimodal distribution of death has
already been alluded to in Fig. 18.2. The ATLS approach focuses on the second or
early death group where death is preventable. Within this so-called preventable
group, death will follow if treatment is withheld or delayed and will do so in a
predictable way. Early and effective treatment during the period when the second
group of deaths occurs also reduces the number of deaths during the third phase
of the trimodal distribution.
An
obstructed airway in a victim with head injury will kill in 3—4 minutes, well
before death might occur from the effects of injury to the brain. Equally, a
life-threatening injury
within
the thorax will kill before a life-threatening bleed within the abdomen.
Finally, major haemorrhage in the limbs, chest or abdomen will kill before a
life-threatening space-occupying lesion. While these are generalisations and
exceptions do occur, they support the ‘primary survey and resuscitation’
management doctrine. The elements of this ABCDE approach are listed below and
will be explained in more detail later.
Elements
of the primary survey
•
Airway with cervical spine control
•
Breathing and ventilation
•
Circulation with control of haemorrhage
•
Dysfunction of the central nervous system
•
Exposure in a controlled environment