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Tue Mar 31 23:30:34 BST 2009

I've thought about this a lot.  (sad guy).  My preferred personal definition:

Trauma: A disease caused by physical injury to the body.

As such it encompasses the wound, the body's response to the injury
and can include psychological consequences. - And importantly
encapsulates it all as a disease entity.

BTW traumatic injury is not a tautology.  There are multiple possible
ways cells suffer injury (ischaemia, poisoning etc) of which physical
damage is only one.  Trauma is a Greek word, meaning Wound.

??
Karim

2009/3/31 Gross, Ronald <Ronald.Gross at baystatehealth.org>:
> From Wbster's:
>
> In·ju·ry (in´jer-ē).  The damage or wound of trauma.
>
> Trau·ma (traw´mă, -mă-tă).  An injury, physical or mental.
>
> Ron
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org [mailto:trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Marrow
> Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 11:02 AM
> To: Trauma &amp; Critical Care mailing list
> Subject: Re: An authoritative definition of "trauma"
>
> I have to just chip in from the lurking compartment.  The problem is a
> linguistic one.  Trauma means injury.  Full stop. It is used in different
> ways by different people.  Psychological trauma, thermal trauma, penetrating
> trauma, minor trauma, they are all types of trauma (or types of injury, if
> you prefer).  One of the oddest usages, in the UK anyway, is to describe
> something as "traumatic injury."  This is just a repetition.  I would
> suggest that the only way to be clear is to use qualifying phrases ....
> "major multiple trauma" "emotional trauma" etc.  Sorry if this is not very
> helpful.  Psychologists should not claim the word, but nor should surgeons!
> Jonathan
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Blueflightmedic" <trauma at emergencyunit.com>
> To: "'Trauma &amp; Critical Care mailing list'" <trauma-list at trauma.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 1:27 PM
> Subject: RE: An authoritative definition of "trauma"
>
>
>> Easy; you are being too inclusive. Trauma is injury sustained from the
>> application of force to tissue excess to the tissue's ability to handle
>> it.
>>
>> Calling psychological upset 'trauma' has confused separate entities for
>> too
>> long.
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org
>> [mailto:trauma-list-bounces at trauma.org]
>> On Behalf Of Howard Berkowitz
>> Sent: 27 March 2009 13:51
>> To: Trauma &amp; Critical Care mailing list
>> Subject: An authoritative definition of "trauma"
>>
>>
>> Rather to my surprise, there is no pure definition of "trauma" at
>> Trauma.org. Here's my challenge: I'm dealing with a wiki article where
>> some
>> advocates want to focus on stress disorders (to say nothing of recovered
>> memory therapies) that are secondary only to psychogenic events, and
>> mostly
>> child abuse (and, in this case, ritual abuse conspircies).  They are
>> preempting the word "trauma" as a synonym for child abuse; they are
>> ignoring
>> even combat stress.
>>
>> I want to start a core article on trauma that then can branch into the
>> sort
>> of multisystem trauma that is of chief interest here, but also include
>> psychogenic traumas. Once that structure exists, I'd like to invite
>> participation, but I need to solve the immediate hijacking of the concept.
>>
>> If there really is no good formal source that can be used, can a consensus
>> definition be created here?
>>
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