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Treating older trauma patients requires a focus on the confluence of age-related physiological changes and the impact of the injury itself. Therefore, the primary way to improve the care of geriatric trauma patients is through the development of universal, systematic multidisciplinary research. To achieve this, the Coalition for National Trauma Research has developed the National Trauma Research Action Plan that has generated a comprehensive research agenda spanning the continuum of geriatric trauma care from prehospital to rehabilitation.Experts in geriatric trauma care and research were recruited to identify current gaps in clinical geriatric research, generate research questions, and establish the priority of these questions using a consensus-driven Delphi survey approach. Participants were identified using established Delphi recruitment guidelines ensuring heterogeneity and generalizability. On subsequent surveys, participants were asked to rank the priority of each research question on a nine-point Likert scale, categorized to represent low-, medium-, and high-priority items. The consensus was defined as more than 60% of panelists agreeing on the priority category.A total of 24 subject matter experts generated questions in 109 key topic areas. After editing for duplication, 514 questions were included in the priority ranking. By round 3, 362 questions (70%) reached 60% consensus. Of these, 161 (44%) were high, 198 (55%) medium, and 3 (1%) low priority.Among the questions prioritized as high priority, questions related to three types of injuries (i.e., rib fracture, traumatic brain injury, and lower extremity injury) occurred with the greatest frequency. Among the 25 highest priority questions, the key topics with the highest frequency were pain management, frailty, and anticoagulation-related interventions. The most common types of research proposed were interventional clinical trials and comparative effectiveness studies, outcome research, and health care systems research.

In 2016, the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine called for the development of a National Trauma Research Action Plan. The Department of Defense funded the Coalition for National Trauma Research to generate a comprehensive research agenda spanning the continuum of trauma and burn care. Given the public health burden of injuries to the central nervous system, neurotrauma was one of 11 panels formed to address this recommendation with a gap analysis and generation of high-priority research questions.We recruited interdisciplinary experts to identify gaps in the neurotrauma literature, generate research questions, and prioritize those questions using a consensus-driven Delphi survey approach. We conducted four Delphi rounds in which participants generated key research questions and then prioritized the importance of the questions on a 9-point Likert scale. Consensus was defined as 60% or greater of panelists agreeing on the priority category. We then coded research questions using an National Trauma Research Action Plan taxonomy of 118 research concepts, which were consistent across all 11 panels.Twenty-eight neurotrauma experts generated 675 research questions. Of these, 364 (53.9%) reached consensus, and 56 were determined to be high priority (15.4%), 303 were deemed to be medium priority (83.2%), and 5 were low priority (1.4%). The research topics were stratified into three groups-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), mild TBI (mTBI), and spinal cord injury. The number of high-priority questions for each subtopic was 46 for severe TBI (19.7%), 3 for mTBI (4.3%) and 7 for SCI (11.7%).This Delphi gap analysis of neurotrauma research identified 56 high-priority research questions. There are clear areas of focus for severe TBI, mTBI, and spinal cord injury that will help guide investigators in future neurotrauma research. Funding agencies should consider these gaps when they prioritize future research.Diagnostic Test or Criteria, Level IV.

Background While massive transfusion protocols (MTP) are associated with decreased mortality in adult trauma patients, there is limited research on the impact of MTP on pediatric trauma patients. The purpose of this study was to compare pediatric trauma patients requiring massive transfusion to all other pediatric trauma patients to identify triggers for MTP activation in injured children. Methods Using our level I trauma center's registry, we retrospectively identified all pediatric trauma patients from January 2015 to January 2018. Massive transfusion (MT) was defined as infusion of 40 mL/kg of blood products in the first 24 hours of admission. Patients missing prehospital vital sign data were excluded from the study. We retrospectively collected data including: demographics, blood utilization, variable outcome data, prehospital vital signs, prehospital transport times, and injury severity scores (ISS). Statistical significance was determined using Mann-Whitney U test and chi-square test. P values less than 0.05 were considered significant. Results Thirty-nine of the 2,035 pediatric patients (1.9%) met criteria for MT. All-cause mortality in MT patients was 49% (19/39) versus 0.01% (20/1996) in Non-MT patients. The two groups significantly differed in ISS, prehospital vital signs, and outcome data.Both systolic blood pressure (SBP) 1.4 were found to be highly specific for massive transfusion with specificities of 86% and 92%, respectively. The combination of SBP 1.4 had a specificity of 94%. The positive and negative predictive values of SBP 1.4 in predicting massive transfusion were 18% and 98%, respectively. Based on positive likelihood ratios, patients with both SBP 1.4 were 7.2 times more likely to require massive transfusion than patients who did not meet both of these vital sign criteria. Conclusions Pediatric trauma patients requiring early blood transfusion present with lower blood pressures and higher heart rates, as well as higher shock indexes and lower pulse pressures. We found that shock index and systolic blood pressure are highly specific tools with promising likelihood ratios that could be used to identify patients requiring early transfusion. Levels of evidence and study type Therapeutic/Care Management, Level V.