Trauma Center

Importance of Prevention

Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium

San Diego Trauma System

Surgical Intensive Care Unit

Trauma Facts & Figures

Wound Healing Clinic

Trauma patients who receive proper medical care within the first sixty minutes triple their chance of survival and dramatically reduce the severity of their injury.  Trauma teams are acutely aware of this crucial time frame. The UCSD Trauma Center is 100% functional around the clock every day, and boasts one of the most notable records of lives saved anywhere.  In fact, a person who has sustained a life-threatening injury in San Diego County stands twice the chance of surviving than if the injury had occurred in nearly any other part of the United States.

San Diego County Trauma System

In 1984 the UCSD trauma center joined with six other area hospitals to form what we now know is the finest trauma system in the country. The San Diego County Trauma System consists of 6 trauma centers and 3 pre-hospital providers. Each trauma center provides trauma care to the designated catchment area. UCSD Trauma Center is the smallest catchment area but the densest in population. The borders of our catchment area follow the lines from south 805 to the ocean and highway 8 to the Mexican border. Imperial County has no trauma system.

Patients are brought here to the resuscitation suite and not the Emergency Department as a major trauma victim based on a decision by pre-hospital paramedics in conjunction with the radio bay station nurses and the doctors.

Triage criteria for transport of a major trauma victim to the resuscitation suite include:

• physiologic criteria -- for example, low blood pressure, decreased Glasgow coma score, or a high respiratory rate
• anatomic criteria, including penetrating wounds to the torso, amputations, and major facial injuries with airway in jeopardy.

The above represent the so-called hard criteria. Soft criteria, on the other hand would include:

• brief loss of consciousness
• a mechanism of injury with a high index of suspicion for injury. (For example; frontal crashes at high speed, death of another car occupant, pedestrian versus auto, or a driver of a small car T-boned by an SUV.)

We receive patients in a variety of ways; by ground ambulance with paramedics or basic-skilled EMT’s, by helicopter or by walk-in or drop off by the sheriff or the police. Many of our patients are transferred to us from Imperial County which has no trauma system and has only limited physician specialty coverage. We usually receive patients from El Centro Medical Center, Pioneer Hospital in Brawley or Yuma Medical Center. Since then, the mortality rate had been reduced from 43% to 2%.