Randomized Controlled Trials: Informing Clinical Practice for Traumatically Injured Patients

Well-designed randomized controlled trials have changed trauma resuscitation dramatically over the past few decades. Randomized controlled trials have established the effectiveness of permissive hypotension and the use of balanced blood product resuscitation to minimize mortality in traumatically injured patients. Together, these therapeutic concepts are termed “damage control resuscitation” and are now the standard of care for traumatically injured patients at risk of hemorrhagic shock and therefore trauma-induced coagulopathy.