Stabbing – The Resus Room

Figures for the year ending September 2019 showed a 7% rise in offences involving knives or sharp instruments recorded by the police (to 44,771 offences). This is 46% higher than when comparable recording began (year ending March 2011) and the highest on record. The news is sadly littered with cases of knife crime and terror, and whilst we may have thought of stabbings as confined to small pockets of the country, sadly it now seems that we all have or all will be dealing with such cases.

The variability in injury and severity is vast from stabbings, however in extremis they are completely time critical, and striking the balance between performing only those life saving interventions on scene, during transport and in ED and getting to the final destination of theatre as quickly as possible.

In this podcast we discuss our thoughts on dealing with these cases; from the moment we get that call, all the way through to getting them into theatre.

As always we’d love to hear any thoughts or comments you have on the website and via twitter, and make sure you take a look at the references and guidelines linked below to draw your own conclusions.

Enjoy!

Simon, Rob & James

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References

Shock in Trauma; The Resus Room podcast

External Haemorrhage; The Resus Room Podcast

Traumatic Arrest; The Resus Room Podcast

Offences involving the use of weapons: data tables. Office of National Statistics

How to stop the dying, as well as the killing, in a terrorist attack. Park CL. BMJ. 2020

Revised gunshot and knife wounds guidance: my view from A&E. A Boyle. GMC Blog. 2017

Presence of a pre-hospital enhanced care team reduces on scene time and improvestriage compliance for stab trauma. Cowley A. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med. 2019