Crains has two insightful articles regarding the recently announced on-campus Trauma Center and Cancer Institute
From 61st and Cottage Grove, above still-leafless trees, you can see the complex where University of Chicago Medicine will house its future trauma center. It didn’t exist when Damian Turner was shot at the corner almost six years ago.
The random victim of someone else’s vendetta, the 18-year-old was hit shortly after midnight on Aug. 15, 2010, just three blocks south of U of C’s medical campus. He struggled to his sister’s apartment, his back bleeding, and collapsed in front of his young nieces and nephews. A neighbor called 911.
Despite a national reputation for excellence, U of C Medicine hadn’t operated an adult trauma care center in more than 20 years. So the paramedics chose the nearest option, driving 10 miles north to Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Turner died at 1:23 a.m., leaving friends and family haunted by a question: Could treatment at a closer facility have saved his life?
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/section/trauma-protest
The emotional and political reasons to establish a center were obvious. But the evidence behind one—not so much.
“There’s plenty of evidence to say there’s a need, and there’s plenty of evidence to say there’s not a need,” says Lee Friedman, an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago who has studied the issue. “You’re in the land of gray.”
The argument for a center looks like this: There are no adult trauma centers on the city’s South Side—a cruel irony for patients given that it has some of the most violent neighborhoods in the city. Of the nearly 19,000 total patients who were transported by Chicago paramedics from late 2012 to 2015, 3,900 suffered from gunshot wounds, the most common trauma injury today.
There are, however, four of these highly specialized centers elsewhere in Chicago: Mount Sinai Hospital in Lawndale on the West Side; Northwestern Memorial Hospital downtown in Streeterville; John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital on the Near West Side; and Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Lakeview. Last year, 26 percent of all trauma victims in Chicago were shuttled down the Dan Ryan Expressway to Advocate Christ Medical Center in suburban Oak Lawn, about 13 miles southwest of Hyde Park, a trip that takes a typical driver at least 30 minutes.
The most compelling case for U of C Medicine to reopen such a center is a 2013 study of nearly 12,000 area gunshot victims led by Dr. Marie Crandall, then a Northwestern trauma surgeon. “What we found was that being more than 5 miles away (from a trauma center), you’re more likely to die,” says Crandall, now a research director at the University of Florida, supporting a long-held belief among trauma surgeons that there is a “golden hour” to transport the seriously injured to a center and have them survive.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/section/trauma-power
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April 18, 2016, 8:29pm
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I was surprised to find out recently that UC Med Center had not had a trauma center for some time. Back in the mid 80s when I was there, it had a reasonably active trauma center/service, although Cook County was better known for it. Glad to see that they are planning on getting one back.
I remember a gun shot victim who was brought in and being worked on by the ER crew. The shooter walked into the room and finished off the victim. Hospital instituted controlled access to the ER rooms after that.
It has a pediatric trauma center right now I think.