Traumatic Injury

Physical trauma refers to a physical injury. In medicine, however, the words trauma patient usually refer to someone who has suffered serious and life-threatening physical injury potentially resulting in secondary complications such as shock, respiratory failure and death.

Trauma patients require specialized care, including surgery and sometimes blood transfusion, within the so-called golden hour of emergency medicine, the first sixty minutes after trauma occurs. This is not a strict deadline, but recognizes that many deaths which could have been prevented by appropriate care occur a relatively short time after injury. In many places organized trauma referral systems have been set up to provide rapid care for injured people. Research has shown that deaths from physical trauma decline where there are organized trauma systems.

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