SAN ANTONIO – University Hospital released 2016’s community trauma report on Thursday and there were some key takeaways.
There was a 300 percent increase in children injured on bicycles and a 230 percent increase in injuries from animal bites. The new goal is to minimize those injuries and the hospital is launching a new initiative to help.
The new program, Stop the Bleed Campaign, is hoping to teach people that like CPR, stopping blood loss is just as critical in saving lives.
"Most of the patients who die after injury, we never see them here because they die before we see them,” trauma director at University Hospital, Dr. Brian Eastridge said. “They die before they get here and those who have a potentially survivable injury, die from bleeding to death."
Eastridge said saving lives can be as simple as ABC.
A for alert
B for bleeding
C for control
A new device on the market can help people control blood loss. It acts like an old fashion tourniquet but for the 21st century.
It was devised a few years ago at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research San Antonio Military Medical Center and can go in a first aid kit.
"This tourniquet may have originated with military injuries in the Middle East, but the push now is to one of these in every home, every car,” Eastridge said. “So you have what you need to stop the bleeding before someone dies."
While the hospital said part of the jump in trauma cases can go back to the pediatric unit being elevated from Level 2 to Level 1 – the hope is the new program will slow that number.
University Hospital will begin offering free classes beginning the week of Feb. 6 at 4 p.m. in the Cypress Room and every first Monday of the month after that. For more information, click here.
University Health System Community Trauma Report.pdf by David Ibanez on Scribd