Study to test whether airborne blood is best
A new study will investigate the effectiveness of giving helicopter air ambulance patients blood products immediately after a major injury.
A new study being carried out by the NIHR Surgical Reconstruction and Microbiology Research Centre in the UK will investigate the effectiveness of giving helicopter air ambulance patients blood products immediately after a major injury. Midlands Air Ambulance (MAA), one of the HEMS charities taking part, said it hopes the trial will determine the method’s effectiveness ‘one way or the other’. The project has been awarded £1.8 million funding from the NIHR, the research arm of the National Health Service (NHS).
The chief investigators are Gavin Perkins, professor of Critical Care Medicine at the University of Warwick and a consultant at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, and Dr Nicholas Crombie, consultant trauma anaesthetist at University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and a doctor with the Midlands Air Ambulance Charity.
“Major trauma is a major cause of death in the UK. Treatment with blood and clotting factors can be lifesaving, but blood is a scarce resource and we currently don’t know when and where the best place to administer it is,” said Perkins. “The first trial of its kind, it will help shape the future treatments of people with major traumatic injuries treated by the NHS.”
Crombie explained how the trial will be conducted: “In the trial, air ambulances and [ground] ambulances will be randomly stocked with or without blood products. Therefore, for eligible patients, the receipt of blood products prior to hospital admission will be determined by what the ambulance that attends to them is carrying. The research team will then look at a number of outcomes, including mortality as well as physical and biochemical evidence of the effectiveness of resuscitation, in order to determine whether there are any differences between those who receive blood products and those who receive clear fluids. We will ensure that people who may not wish to receive blood products, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, are identified and specifically excluded from the trial in accordance with their wishes.”
West Midlands Ambulance Service, East Anglia Air Ambulance, Essex and Herts Air Ambulance, MAGPAS Helimedix, The Air Ambulance Service and the NHS Blood and Transplant Service will all also take place in the trial, which will be managed by the University of Birmingham Clinical Trials Unit (BCTU).