Trauma incidents attended by emergency medical services in Victoria, Australia

International literature describing the profile of trauma patients attended by a statewide emergency medical services (EMS) system is lacking. Most literature is limited to descriptions of trauma responses for a single emergency medical service, or to patients transported to a specific Level-1 trauma hospital. There is no Victorian or Australian literature describing the type of trauma patients transported by a state emergency medical service.

The purpose of this study was to define a profile of all trauma incidents attended by statewide EMS.

A retrospective cohort study of all patient care records (PCR) for trauma responses attended by Victorian Ambulance Services for 2002 was conducted. Criteria for trauma categories were defined previously, and data were extracted from the PCRs and entered into a secure data repository for descriptive analysis to determine the trauma profile. Ethics committee approval was obtained.

There were 53,039 trauma incidents attended by emergency ambulances during the 12-month period. Of these, 1,566 patients were in physiological distress, 11,086 had a significant pattern of injury, and a further 8,931 had an identifiable mechanism of injury. The profile includes minor trauma (n = 9,342), standing falls (n = 20,511), no patient transported (n = 3,687), and deceased patients (n = 459).

This is a unique analysis of prehospital trauma. It provides a baseline dataset that may be utilized in future studies of prehospital trauma care. Additionally, this dataset identifies a ten-fold difference in major trauma between the prehospital and the hospital assessments.