Blood gas use in trauma

Abstract

Trauma continues to be one of the lead causes of preventable deaths in our country. Even with the decrease of military trauma, the incidence of trauma remains high, dominating the emergency room. The initial approach is fundamental to decrease mortality. Traditionally, vital signs have been used as a marker of hemorrhage shock, but observational studies of high volumes of patients showed how those often can’t identify patients with hemorrhage shock, which makes necessary more objective markers such as the blood gas with the measure of lactate and base deficit, which has proven useful in the prediction of mortality, early identification of shock and a faster activation of transfusion protocols.