Prehospital emergency anaesthesia: time taken to care for and respond to a critically injured patient

The 2007 National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) Trauma: Who Cares? report recommended that people trained to administer anaesthesia and intubate severely injured patients should be available in prehospital environments. Published articles, reference documents and guidance reports were reviewed to compare the management plans and standard operating procedures produced by an ambulance trust in England that provides prehospital emergency anaesthesia (PHEA). Documents reviewed all provide a common un-referenced patient injury list showing indications to perform PHEA but do not state a time frame within which it should be performed. No minimum time before PHEA is started and how long is acceptable to wait for a specialist resource to arrive before an ambulance can transport to a hospital were found. Further work is required to establish and formalise this time frame.