Trauma & Orthopaedics

A review of the first UK Resuscitology course in Manchester, using challenging cases to examine how teams think and act during resuscitation. The article introduces STEPS and GPAS analysis, connects them with the Zero Point Survey and shares visual summaries of the learning.

Highlights from the prehospital day of the 2019 London Trauma Conference. The report covers cardiac arrest decisions, access to defibrillation, vascular access, major incident response and obstetric emergencies, alongside practical discussion of communication and cognitive overload in pressured environments.

Pete Hulme reports from Tactical Trauma 2019 in Sweden, bringing together lessons from prehospital teams, police and emergency services. The review explores bystander response, haemorrhage control, triage and team leadership when trauma care takes place in difficult environments.

A review of the CRASH-3 trial and whether tranexamic acid (TXA) is of benefit in traumatic brain injury patients.

Simon Carley selects papers from 2018–2019 for his RCEM conference talk, explaining why they might influence emergency medicine practice. Topics include paediatric seizures, cardiac arrest and pulmonary embolism in pregnancy, with links to fuller appraisals of the studies.

What is actually in a bag of packed red blood cells? This appraisal revisits a 2001 laboratory study of stored blood, exploring acid–base and electrolyte changes while distinguishing measurements in the bag from evidence of their effects on patients.