Medicine under time pressure with incomplete information.
11 topics · 11 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Mass Casualty Management Systems: Strategies and Guidelines for Building Health Sector Capacity
World Health Organization · 2007
Argues that a mass casualty response depends more on pre-arranged coordination between hospitals, ambulance services and command structures than on…
+1 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Injury Severity Score: A Method for Describing Patients with Multiple Injuries and Evaluating Emergency Care
Susan P. Baker, Brian O'Neill, William Haddon Jr. & William B. Long · 1974
Builds a single numeric score from injuries across body regions that predicts mortality better than counting injuries alone, giving trauma systems a…
+4 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
Catheterization of the Heart in Man with Use of a Flow-Directed Balloon-Tipped Catheter
H. J. C. Swan, William Ganz, James Forrester, Herbert Marcus, Gerald Diamond & David Chonette · 1970
Describes a catheter that floats with blood flow into the pulmonary artery without fluoroscopy, letting pressures inside a beating heart be measured…
+3 more at this level
11 works
World Health Organization
Argues that a mass casualty response depends more on pre-arranged coordination between hospitals, ambulance services and command structures than on any single hospital's surge capacity, and sets out how to build that coordination in advance.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Nicki Gilboy, Paula Tanabe, Debbie Travers & Alexander M. Rosenau
Sets out a five-level algorithm that triages patients by both acuity and expected resource use rather than acuity alone, so two equally sick-looking patients can be sorted correctly.
Susan P. Baker, Brian O'Neill, William Haddon Jr. & William B. Long
Builds a single numeric score from injuries across body regions that predicts mortality better than counting injuries alone, giving trauma systems a common measure for comparing case severity and outcomes.
Barry H. Rumack & Henry Matthew
Plots plasma paracetamol concentration against time since ingestion to predict which overdoses will cause liver damage, giving emergency departments the nomogram still used to decide who needs antidote treatment.
World Health Organization
Argues that basic, layered prehospital trauma systems save more lives per dollar in low-resource settings than importing advanced ambulance services designed for wealthy countries.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Institute of Medicine Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the United States Health System
Argues that emergency and trauma care in the United States is fragmented into uncoordinated local systems overwhelmed by rising demand, and calls for regionalised, coordinated emergency care systems rather than incremental fixes to individual hospitals.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Jean-Louis Vincent & Daniel De Backer
Reviews shock as a single physiological problem of inadequate tissue oxygen delivery with four overlapping causes, and argues that treatment should follow a shared sequence of resuscitation regardless of which cause is present.
link checked 17 Sept 2026H. J. C. Swan, William Ganz, James Forrester, Herbert Marcus, Gerald Diamond & David Chonette
Describes a catheter that floats with blood flow into the pulmonary artery without fluoroscopy, letting pressures inside a beating heart be measured at the bedside and founding routine invasive haemodynamic monitoring in intensive care.
The Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Network
A randomised trial found that ventilating ARDS patients with 6ml/kg rather than 12ml/kg tidal volumes cut mortality by nearly a quarter, overturning the assumption that larger breaths aided oxygenation.
Mervyn Singer and Clifford S. Deutschman
Redefines sepsis as life-threatening organ dysfunction from a dysregulated host response rather than as inflammation, and argues the older SIRS criteria were too unspecific to identify who was actually deteriorating.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Panchal et al.
Synthesises the evidence behind chest compression rate, ventilation timing and defibrillation sequencing into a single resuscitation algorithm, revised through a formal evidence review rather than by consensus alone.
link checked 17 Sept 2026