On 2014 Aug 10, Ryan Radecki commented:

Post-publication commentary:

"Get to the Choppa! Or ... Maybe Not?"

Helicopter transport is entrenched in our systematic management of trauma. It is glamorized on television, and retrospective National Trauma Data Bank studies seem to suggest survival improvement – and those with head injury seem to benefit most.

But, these NTDB studies encompass heterogenous populations and are challenged in creating truly equivalent control groups. This study, on the other hand, is a single-center experience, allowing greater consistency across divided cohorts. In a novel approach, these authors collected all HEMS trauma transfer requests to their facility across their 30-county catchement area – and specifically looked at occasions when weather precluded HEMS. This therefore created two cohorts of patients eligible for HEMS, with a subset that was transported by ALS due to chance events. The paramedic crews manning the HEMS and ALS transfers were staffed by the same company, and therefore had roughly equivalent training....

http://www.emlitofnote.com/2014/08/get-to-choppa-or-maybe-not.html

On 2014 Aug 10, Ryan Radecki commented:

Post-publication commentary:

"Get to the Choppa! Or ... Maybe Not?"

Helicopter transport is entrenched in our systematic management of trauma. It is glamorized on television, and retrospective National Trauma Data Bank studies seem to suggest survival improvement – and those with head injury seem to benefit most.

But, these NTDB studies encompass heterogenous populations and are challenged in creating truly equivalent control groups. This study, on the other hand, is a single-center experience, allowing greater consistency across divided cohorts. In a novel approach, these authors collected all HEMS trauma transfer requests to their facility across their 30-county catchement area – and specifically looked at occasions when weather precluded HEMS. This therefore created two cohorts of patients eligible for HEMS, with a subset that was transported by ALS due to chance events. The paramedic crews manning the HEMS and ALS transfers were staffed by the same company, and therefore had roughly equivalent training....

http://www.emlitofnote.com/2014/08/get-to-choppa-or-maybe-not.html