Better care could cut deaths from trauma by 20 per cent: Report
Improved care could prevent one in every five deaths currently lost to traumatic injuries in the United States, a new federal report finds.
Injuries from car crashes, gun violence, falls and other incidents remain the leading cause of death among Americans younger than 46, a committee from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine noted.
Traumas aftermath also costs the United States about $670 billion in medical care and lost productivity in 2013, the group said.
And with incidents of domestic and international terrorism and mass casualty events increasingly in the spotlight, the United States could learn from the militarys response to such incidents, the panel said.
With the decrease in combat and the need to maintain readiness for trauma care between wars, a window of opportunity now exists to integrate military and civilian trauma systems and view them not separately, but as one, explained committee chair Dr. Donald Berwick, president emeritus of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, in Cambridge, Mass. The committee stressed that prevention is the best way to reduce the impact of trauma. However, its also crucial to provide the best possible trauma care when injuries do occur.
The panel estimated that of the nearly 148,000 deaths due to trauma in the United States in 2014, as many as 20 percent -- about 30,000 -- may have been prevented with top quality care.
HealthDay
