Being Prepared for Trauma in the Blood Bank

Trauma is, unfortunately, an inevitability in medicine. Because of this, it is important to have adequate access to trauma resources for optimal patient care when injuries and accidents happen. Hospitals are designated as having certain trauma levels – ranging from I to IV in Texas, and this designation is based on the kind of trauma care available at each hospital. For example, a Level I trauma center provides the most comprehensive trauma care for patients presenting with both minimal and severe traumatic injuries.

For community blood centers and hospital blood banks, it is important to be able to provide enough blood products so that each hospital can be prepared to care for patients presenting with emergency medical injuries. When working with hospitals, we must pay special attention to their trauma designation level as this impacts their emergency blood transfusion needs.

Each state is involved in their own hospital trauma designation, along with help of the American College of Surgeons (ACS). The ACS states that a Level I trauma center must admit at least 1,200 trauma patients yearly or have at least 240 major trauma injury annual admissions (remember not all trauma injuries have similar severities, some may be minor injuries). This means that as a hospital blood supplier, we must be able to meet the needs of the multiple Level I trauma centers that we provide blood for in our community! (If you are interested, you can find the different designated trauma facilities and their designation level throughout Texas on the Texas Department of State Health Services website.)

Additionally, many of these trauma centers require more universal blood products for emergency transfusion to patients with unknown blood types – meaning these trauma centers need a lot of blood type O red blood cells! Yes… this is a shameless plug for you blood type O donors to come out and visit one of our friendly Carter BloodCare donor centers.

So, when thinking about the emergency medical needs of the community, it is important to remember that blood suppliers provide an important role in emergency preparedness. We rely on our generous blood donors to ensure that patients presenting with major traumatic injuries can get the life-saving blood they need.

References:

Texas Department of State Health Services. https://www.dshs.texas.gov/emstraumasystems/default.shtm

American College of Surgeons. https://www.facs.org/quality-programs/trauma/tqp/center-programs/vrc

American Trauma Society. https://www.amtrauma.org/page/traumalevels