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Background: The three pillars of a good trauma system are the prehospital care, definitive care, and rehabilitative services. The prehospital care is a critical component of the efforts to lower trauma mortality. Objective: To study the prehospital profile of patients who died due to trauma, compute the time taken to reach our facility, find the cause of delay, and make feasible recommendations. Materials and Methods: A hospital-based study was performed at a trauma center in Puducherry from June 2009 to August 2010. Puducherry is a union territory of India in the geographical terrain of the state of Tamil Nadu. A total of 241deaths due to trauma were included. Apart from the demographic and injury characteristics, a detailed prehospital log was constructed regarding the time of incident, the referral patterns, care given in the prehospital phase, the distance travelled, and the total time taken to reach our center. Results: The majority (59%) of patients were referred, with stopovers at two consecutive referral centers (30%), needing at least two vehicles to transport to definitive care (70%), clocking unnecessary distances (67%), and delayed due to non therapeutic intervention (87%). The majority of deaths (66%) were due to head injury. Only 2.96% of referred cases reached us within the first hour. Few of the patients coming directly to us had vehicle change due to local availability and lack of knowledge of predestined definitive care facility. Overall, 94.6% of direct cases arrived within 4 h whereas 93.3% of referred cases required up to 7 h to arrive at definitive care. Conclusions: Seriously injured patients lose valuable prehospital time because there is no direction regarding destination and interfacility transfer, a lack of seamless transport, and no concept of initial trauma care. The lack of direction is compounded in geographical areas that are situated at the border of political jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: There is an alarming trend of injuries leading to poor outcome of victims in India. Objective: To study the profile of patients who died due to trauma and to identify factors involved in both pre-hospital and hospital care. Materials and Methods: A hospital-based study was performed at a trauma center in Puducherry from June 2009 to May 2010. Patients who had at least one sign of life on admission and later died were included. The demographic characteristics, injury mechanism, nature and site of injury, influence of alcohol, pre-hospital time and care, distance traveled, number of referrals, time spent in study hospital, cause of death, and missed injuries revealed at post mortem were noted. Results: Of the 204 fatal cases, most were between 25-65 years of age (77%); sustained injuries over weekends (36%) and between 4 pm and midnight (41%); had at least one halt in a medical facility before reaching definitive care (56%); and died within a week (63%). Adults (25-65 y) sustained most injuries (77%) on two wheelers. In those aged over 65 years, 79 percent were pedestrians. Road traffic injuries were responsible for 82 % of deaths; 16 percent were reportedly under the influence of alcohol at the time of injury. Mean delay from the time of accident to admission was 14.9 hours and median distance traveled was 30 kilometers. Head injury was the most common (66%) cause of death. Post mortem revealed skull fractures (37%), while missed injuries were noted in 8 percent, mostly involving the cervical spine and chest wall. Conclusion: The problem of trauma care needs to be addressed urgently in this part of southern India to reduce mortality and morbidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]