The Ulster medical journal
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Based in Belfast, the Royal Victoria Hospital is the only Major Trauma Centre in Northern Ireland. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on 23rd March 2020, Northern Ireland was placed into 'lockdown' with the majority of the population advised to "stay at home". The objective of this paper is to identify what effect the lockdown restrictions had on the workload of the Major Trauma Service at the Royal Victoria Hospital. ⋯ Overall the number of admissions to the major trauma service was reduced during the lockdown period. A significant proportion of the reduction may be a result of social restrictions that reduced volume of traffic on Northern Irelands roads. Further study of future lockdowns and including admissions data of other MTCs in the UK would allow us to draw more robust conclusions.
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[This corrects the article on p. 130 in vol. 89, PMID: 33093708.].
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Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS) in Northern Ireland: An Analysis of the First 100 Cases.
Northern Ireland (N.I) is the most recent region within the UK to establish a helicopter emergency medical service (HEMS) which became operational in July 2017.1 We present descriptive data and discussion about the first 100 cases managed by this new trauma service. Some call-outs involved multiple cases. The data covers a period of 130 days from late July 2018 to late November 2018. ⋯ There has been considerable learning in the early stages and analysis of this data has indicated:Since starting the service we have provided critical interventions to a wide variety of age groups throughout NI. Gender profile, mechanism of injury, vulnerable road users (defined as motorcyclists, pedal cyclists and pedestrians) and RSI rates are comparable to data published in the UK. 2,3,4,5 The Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH) emergency department (ED) was the receiving unit for most patients attended by HEMS. 90% of all patients transferred to hospital were alive at 24 hours.