ABSTRACT
Death from trauma accounts for half of all pediatric deaths. This proportion has persisted despite advances in motor vehicle safety and injury-prevention programmes such as helmet use. Proper emergency medical services management of traumatic injury should be able to prevent up to a fifth of these deaths and proportionately decrease morbidity. What constitutes ‘major’ trauma is difficult to define even retrospectively, let alone when the patient is coming through the Emergency Department (ED) doors. For the purposes of this chapter, we will consider major trauma to be apparent traumatic injury to multiple organ systems. The following principles will help the practitioner to manage these challenging patients as effectively as possible.
