Australian trauma care: time for change (editorial)

Dr Sugrue and the Liverpool Hospital Trauma Department have a long-standing commitment in improving the delivery of care given to the seriously injured trauma patients. Based on their recent report on trauma death review analysis, they challenge the efficiency of the current trauma practice and indicate the urgent need to change the approach to the treatment of trauma patients. Although they managed to decrease the average mortality of severely injured trauma patients with injury severity score >15 from 16% to 13% during the 8-year study period (statistical significance not shown), the avoidable mortality rate remained unchanged at 25%! The findings and suggestions of the paper represent only one hospital and the recommendations are potentially relevant only to the major trauma centres in Australia and New Zealand. The aim of this editorial is to summarize the key findings of this landmark Australian paper, which are relevant to the delivery of surgical trauma care