List Archives

Mon Oct 9 05:20:48 BST 2006

Let me weight in to a CONSTRUCTIVE debate!

Karim has already highlighted the differences between trauma surgery in
the USA and elsewhere in the world, including the difficulty getting
subspecialised surgeons interested in trauma.

I saw that first hand when I first bought Ken Mattox's book 'Top
Knife'. A senior Professor of Surgery (upper GI and oesophageal surgery,
weekly oesophagectomy list, etc) came across me reading it, and I
described to him the 'Top Knife / Top Gun' analogy, for training the
'best of the best'. "BUT", he pointed out to me, "The BEST surgeons
don't DO trauma".

So given that in Australia / New Zealand / the UK etc it is difficult
to get senior surgeons interested in trauma (with notable exceptions),
for the most part it is Emergency Physicians, Intensivists and
Anaesthetists that take up the slack. I'm happy to accept that that is
substandard compared to having a highly trained 'Trauma Surgey
Attending' present when every seriously injured patient arrives, but as
Craig Ellis asked, where is the evidence that that is actually correct?

What I need is something strong enough that even a senior Professor of
Surgery will agree that the evidence supports having trauma surgeons
present in the emergency department when the patient arrives.

Or could it be that a well trained DOCTOR is what is needed, regardless
of specialty, with the ability to activate emergency surgery for the
minority of our (predominantly blunt) trauma patients who actually need
an operation?

Cheers, Ian

Ian Seppelt FANZCA FJFICM
Senior Staff Specialist
Dept of Intensive Care Medicine
The Nepean Hospital, PO Box 63 Penrith NSW 2751
Clinical Lecturer, University of Sydney

>>> karim at trauma.org 5/10/2006 6:19am >>>
OK, it's possible I overstated the case for the sake of a little
argument
(the list has been rather quiet recently!) but there are trends here
which I
believe are important.  First, clearly if you are a member of this
list,
attend trauma conferences, or are an attending at a level 1 trauma
centre,
chances are that you are committed to trauma/emergency care and you are
not
the subject of my ranting.  However if you consider the whole body of
surgeons I think the picture looks less rosy - whether you are in the
UK,
South Africa, Australia or the US.  If you do not work in a Level 1/2
trauma
centre, if you are a resident planning on going straight in to private
practice, if you are a laparoscopic left adrenal surgeon, I don't
believe
the same zeal for trauma or emegency surgery is present.  If I am
totally
off base, then I happily stand corrected, and certainly I was
exaggerating
to make the point.  But the fact stands that emergency medicine
developed
(initially) to fill a vacuum left by surgery, and some specialties
(witness
cardiothoracics) are retreating to the operating room.  We need to make
sure
trauma or acute care surgery doesn't go the same way.

Karim 

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