Home › Trauma › Italian HEMS trauma mortality predictors

Trauma

Italian HEMS trauma mortality predictors

Prehospital severity and in-hospital mortality in trauma patients managed by the Friuli-Venezia Giulia helicopter emergency medical service: a 6-year retrospective cohort study
European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery · 2026-10-09 · Added 11 October 2026

Six-year Italian HEMS cohort of 3,152 transported trauma patients found 3.4% in-hospital mortality, independently predicted by older age, lower Revised Trauma Score, intubation and prehospital CPR — the last two acting mainly as severity markers.

Study type

Cohort

Design

Retrospective observational cohort

Participants

3,143 HEMS-managed trauma patients with outcome data

Main finding

In-hospital mortality 3.4%; independently associated with RTS <4 (OR 5.19, 95% CI 1.64–17.04), RTS 4–<7 (OR 2.36), older age (OR 1.03 per year), tracheal intubation and prehospital CPR

Caveat

Single-region HEMS cohort with internal-only model validation and residual severity confounding around intubation and CPR

Bottom line

Context only

Learning goal

Strengthen my judgement on how prehospital physiological severity and age predict trauma mortality in Australian practice.

More

• Topic: Trauma
• Daily scan: 11 October 2026

Related papers on Trauma

• Stable penetrating chest trauma: surgery increasingly avoided

  BMC Emergency Medicine · 12 Oct 2026 · Cohort · Context only

  Ten-year retrospective review of 268 haemodynamically stable penetrating chest injuries in Marseille, where non-operative management was attempted in 78% and failed in fewer than 9%, with hospital stay falling from 7.6 to 5.2 days in the recent period.

• Prehospital variables can't pick pelvic binder benefit

  The American Surgeon · 11 Oct 2026 · Cross-sectional · Context only

  Blinded imaging review of 298 CT-confirmed pelvic ring injuries found binder application would be potentially mechanically unfavourable in 56% of cases, and no prehospital variable (hypotension, shock index, mechanism, GCS) discriminated favourable morphology well.

• Prehospital TXA helps fibrinolytic shutdown

  The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery · 11 Oct 2026 · Other · Hypothesis-generating

  Pooled analysis of two prospective prehospital TXA trials found fibrinolytic shutdown carried 14.5% 30-day mortality versus 6.5% with physiological fibrinolysis, and shutdown patients randomised to TXA had about a third the risk of death.

• Field fluids before ROSC in crush arrests

  Ulusal Travma Ve Acil Cerrahi Dergisi = Turkish Journal of Trauma & Emergency Surgery · 9 Oct 2026 · Cohort · Hypothesis-generating

  A single-centre retrospective study of 37 earthquake victims in cardiac arrest after the 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes found ROSC in 27% — exclusively in the 25 patients who received pre-hospital fluids (mean ~1.5 L) — with better pH, lactate, and potassium on arrival.