[Emergency diagnosis and emergency care in trauma resuscitation]

Adequate primary and preclinical evaluation of thoracic trauma is the basic for effective therapy. The first intention must be to understand the mechanism of trauma and injury. Severe thoracic trauma is predominantly the result of high energy trauma and mostly combined to multiple injuries (polytrauma). The intention of emergency care medicine is to reduce the number of lethal complications due to trauma. Early intubation and ventilation in preclinical management is accepted as a gold standard. Nevertheless, there is a high percentage of nonintubated and undertreated polytraumatised patients that reach the clinic. To investigate the reason for and problems of undertreatment we have to initiate basic research in accident and polytrauma research.