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Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement
BACKGROUND: Avalanche rescues mostly rely on helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) and include technical rescue and complex medical situations under difficult conditions. The adequacy of avalanche victim management has been shown to be unexpectedly low, suggesting the need for quality improve...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6033290/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29973290 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-018-0520-3 |
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author | Kottmann, Alexandre Carron, Pierre-Nicolas Theiler, Lorenz Albrecht, Roland Tissi, Mario Pasquier, Mathieu |
author_facet | Kottmann, Alexandre Carron, Pierre-Nicolas Theiler, Lorenz Albrecht, Roland Tissi, Mario Pasquier, Mathieu |
author_sort | Kottmann, Alexandre |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Avalanche rescues mostly rely on helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) and include technical rescue and complex medical situations under difficult conditions. The adequacy of avalanche victim management has been shown to be unexpectedly low, suggesting the need for quality improvement. We analyse the technical rescue and medical competency requirements of HEMS crewmembers for avalanche rescue missions, as well as their clinical exposure. The study aims to identify areas that should be the focus of future quality improvement efforts. METHODS: This 15-year retrospective study of avalanche rescue by the Swiss HEMS Rega includes all missions where at least one patient had been caught by an avalanche, found within 24 h of the alarm being raised, and transported. RESULTS: Our analyses included 422 missions (596 patients). Crews were frequently confronted with technical rescue aspects, including winching (29%) and patient location and extrication (48%), as well as multiple casualty accidents (32%). Forty-seven percent of the patients suffered potential or overt vital threat; 29% were in cardiac arrest. The on-site medical management of the victims required a large array of basic and advanced medical skills. Clinical exposure was low, as 56% of the physicians were involved in only one avalanche rescue mission over the study period. CONCLUSIONS: Our data provide a solid baseline measure and valuable starting point for improving our understanding of the challenges encountered during avalanche rescue missions. We further suggest QI interventions, that might be immediately useful for HEMS operating under similar settings. A coordinated approach using a consensus process to determine quality indicators and a minimal dataset for the specific setting of avalanche rescue would be the logical next step. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13049-018-0520-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6033290 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-60332902018-07-12 Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement Kottmann, Alexandre Carron, Pierre-Nicolas Theiler, Lorenz Albrecht, Roland Tissi, Mario Pasquier, Mathieu Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med Original Research BACKGROUND: Avalanche rescues mostly rely on helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) and include technical rescue and complex medical situations under difficult conditions. The adequacy of avalanche victim management has been shown to be unexpectedly low, suggesting the need for quality improvement. We analyse the technical rescue and medical competency requirements of HEMS crewmembers for avalanche rescue missions, as well as their clinical exposure. The study aims to identify areas that should be the focus of future quality improvement efforts. METHODS: This 15-year retrospective study of avalanche rescue by the Swiss HEMS Rega includes all missions where at least one patient had been caught by an avalanche, found within 24 h of the alarm being raised, and transported. RESULTS: Our analyses included 422 missions (596 patients). Crews were frequently confronted with technical rescue aspects, including winching (29%) and patient location and extrication (48%), as well as multiple casualty accidents (32%). Forty-seven percent of the patients suffered potential or overt vital threat; 29% were in cardiac arrest. The on-site medical management of the victims required a large array of basic and advanced medical skills. Clinical exposure was low, as 56% of the physicians were involved in only one avalanche rescue mission over the study period. CONCLUSIONS: Our data provide a solid baseline measure and valuable starting point for improving our understanding of the challenges encountered during avalanche rescue missions. We further suggest QI interventions, that might be immediately useful for HEMS operating under similar settings. A coordinated approach using a consensus process to determine quality indicators and a minimal dataset for the specific setting of avalanche rescue would be the logical next step. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s13049-018-0520-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-07-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6033290/ /pubmed/29973290 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-018-0520-3 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Original Research Kottmann, Alexandre Carron, Pierre-Nicolas Theiler, Lorenz Albrecht, Roland Tissi, Mario Pasquier, Mathieu Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement |
title | Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement |
title_full | Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement |
title_fullStr | Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement |
title_full_unstemmed | Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement |
title_short | Identification of the technical and medical requirements for HEMS avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a HEMS in Switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement |
title_sort | identification of the technical and medical requirements for hems avalanche rescue missions through a 15-year retrospective analysis in a hems in switzerland: a necessary step for quality improvement |
topic | Original Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6033290/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29973290 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-018-0520-3 |
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