Articles: emergency-medical-services.
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Emergency medical services have been organized to meet the needs of adult patients. A study was undertaken to determine the training in pediatrics offered to paramedics and emergency medical technicians throughout the United States and the equipment carried by prehospital care provider agencies. Most training (50%) takes place at colleges and universities and the remainder at hospitals and emergency medical services agencies. ⋯ Some programs offer no training in pediatric emergency medicine. The most common deficiencies in pediatric equipment included backboards, pediatric drugs, resuscitation masks, and small intravenous catheters. More attention to training and equipping prehospital personnel for pediatric emergencies may help to improve outcomes of out-of-hospital resuscitations of infants and children.
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This prospective study evaluated the use of basic vital signs, two mechanisms of injury, and time-distance factors as field triage criteria for on-scene helicopter transport of 130 patients to a trauma center serving a rural area. The vital signs criteria included any one or more of the following: level of consciousness (LOC) less than or equal to unresponsive to verbal stimulation; respiration rate (RR) less than or equal to 10 or greater than or equal to 30; systolic blood pressure (BP) less than or equal to 90; pulse (P) less than or equal to 60 or greater than or equal to 120. The flight crew recorded vital signs taken by the first responder capable of basic assessment. ⋯ The presence of one or more abnormal signs identified a group of seriously injured trauma patients (mean Injury Severity Score = 29.1) with 24% mortality compared to a predicted mortality of 32% (p less than 0.02). Unresponsiveness to verbal stimulation in the field was the single most predictive criterion, yielding sensitivity of 93% and specificity of 85%. Time-distance criteria were helpful to determine helicopter use.