%0 Journal Article
%T The golden hour after injury among civilians caught in conflict zones
%J Disaster medicine and public health preparedness
%D 2019
%A Forrester, Joseph D.
%A August, Auriel
%A Cai, Lawrence Z.
%A Kushner, Adam L.
%A Wren, Sherry M.
%V ePub
%N ePub
%P 1-9
%X ABSTRACTIntroduction:The term "golden hour" describes the first 60 minutes after patients sustain injury. In resource-available settings, rapid transport to trauma centers within this time period is standard-of-care. We compared transport times of injured civilians in modern conflict zones to assess the degree to which injured civilians are transported within the golden hour in these environments. <br><br>METHODS: We evaluated PubMed, Ovid, and Web of Science databases for manuscripts describing transport time after trauma among civilian victims of trauma from January 1990 to November 2017. <br><br>RESULTS: The initial database search identified 2704 abstracts. Twenty-nine studies met inclusion and exclusion criteria. Conflicts in Yugoslavia/Bosnia/Herzegovina, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Cambodia, Somalia, Georgia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Turkey were represented, describing 47 273 patients. Only 7 (24%) manuscripts described transport times under 1 hour. Transport typically required several hours to days. <br><br>CONCLUSION: Anticipated transport times have important implications for field triage of injured persons in civilian conflict settings because existing overburdened civilian health care systems may become further overwhelmed if in-hospital health capacity is unable to keep pace with inflow of the severely wounded.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>
%G en
%I Cambridge University Press
%@ 1935-7893
%U http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2019.42