[S3 guidelines on intensive care medicine following polytrauma : Aspects regarding definitive surgical treatment]

The treatment of polytraumatized patients is challenging. Intensive efforts and interdisciplinary teamwork have improved survival rates of severely injured patients over the last decades. High quality guideline recommendations focusing on the prehospital setting, emergency room management and also the initial surgical phase have been published and are frequently updated. The current manuscript is part of new guidelines on an S3 level that focuses on treatment of polytraumatized patients who were transferred to the intensive care unit after initial emergency treatment. These patients have special needs, especially with respect to monitoring, pain management, ventilation strategy, nutrition etc. and most often require definitive surgical stabilization of injuries to the thorax, abdomen, pelvis and extremities. This article summarizes the current literature and gives recommendations with respect to early definitive treatment of patients with multiple trauma and particularly with a view to the best possible timing of the definitive treatment.