Grant: Project Grant

Traumatic injuries affect Canadians of all ages, races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Bleeding is the second leading cause of death from injury. It is estimated that for every minute delay of blood product arrival for severely injured patients increases the odds of mortality by 5%. There have been previous scores developed to predict the need for massive transfusion for injured patients, however they are limited in their prehospital applicability as they require blood sampling or ultrasound results which are not standard practice the Canadian prehospital environment. Therefore, a prehospital score that can be applied within the Canadian context is needed. Most Canadian trauma centres and hospitals do not have immediate access to blood products in the department. This requires blood products to be requested and then sent to the department for critically ill patients, which can result in significant delays. One strategy to mitigate this is to call for blood products before the patient arrives. Development of a prehospital score to reliably predict the need for blood transfusion could standardize this practice, acting as a potential "prehospital blood alert". This could prompt the receiving hospital to have blood products available and reduce the time to transfusion - saving lives. Our research will address this issue with the following specific aims: 1. Develop a predictive score to predict the need for blood transfusion for injured patients (the PTP Score) using variables available in the Canadian prehospital system 2. Externally validate the PTP Score using a provincial trauma registry database