A prospective study on management of polytrauma with early appropriate care

Abstract

Introduction: The definition of polytrauma varies among different specialty and different countries, polytrauma patients are the subgroup of severely injured patients who have sustained injuries to more than one body region and organ with any one of the injury being life threatening. Early appropriate care (EAC), is an immediate resuscitative treatment protocol in orthopaedic trauma management in which we aim to feature any major trauma and address the most time critical injuries of body without adding to their physiological overload to the system. The aim of early appropriate care is to fix and stabilize the central skeletal system along with peripheral long bones of the skeletal system to reduce the risk of complications. Materials and Methods: It is a prospective observational study conducted from October 2016 to November 2017 and 29 patients in the study with a mean age of 35years. All patients were managed by Early Appropriate Care. The average time taken to resuscitate the patients was 8 hrs. Following surgery patients were followed up for one month to observe post operative complications. Results: In our series 3 patients developed pulmonary embolism, patients who developed complications were managed successfully without any mortality. Thus, a low incidence of mortality seems to be associated with EAC protocol in our series as well as in the existing literature. Conclusion: Following adequate resuscitation and correction of acidosis early definitive fixation is possible for bony injuries of polytrauma patients which avoids the need of second surgery, also reduces the hospital stay duration, reduces post operative complications and early rehabilitation protocols can be made. Keywords: Early appropriate care, EAC, Polytrauma management.