Prehospital factors associated with mortality in injured air medical patients.

AbstractBackground. Air medical transport provides rapid transport to definitive care. Overtriage and the expense and risk of transport may offset survival benefits. Objective. We assessed the ability of prehospital factors to predict resource need for helicopter-transported patients. Methods. We performed a prospective, observational cohort analysis of injured scene patients taken to one of two level I trauma centers from October 2009 to September 2010. Variables analyzed included patient demographics, diagnoses, and clinical outcomes (in-hospital mortality, emergent surgery within 24 hours, blood transfusion within 24 hours, and intensive care unit [ICU] admission ≥24 hours, as well as a combined outcome of all clinical outcomes). Prehospital variables were prospectively obtained from air medical providers at the time of transport and included past medical history, mechanism of injury, and clinical factors. We compared those variables with and without the outcomes of interest via χ2 analysis and the Kru...