- Oral presentation
- Open Access
- Published:
Changing landscapes for plastic surgery: the effect of the Major Trauma Network on emergency operative workload
Scandinavian Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation and Emergency Medicine volume 23, Article number: O1 (2015)
Background
The advent of major trauma centres (MTCs) in the UK in 2010 has led to a concentration of complex, polytrauma cases in these centres. The role plastic surgeons play in trauma has increased and evolved over time [1], and currently plastic surgeons input into a wide variety of trauma [2]. Our study aimed to analyse the effect of MTC status on plastic surgery activity at our centre.
Method
All trauma patients admitted to a London MTC in 2013 who underwent an operation were identified using Trauma Audit & Research Network data. Operative procedure(s) and operating specialty were recorded. This was compared to local historical data from pre-MTC go-live (2008–2010).
Results
Of the 2606 trauma calls in 2013, 416 patients required surgical intervention. 29.3% of these patients (n = 122) were operated on by plastics (either as sole operating team or part of multi-specialty team). 76.2% (n = 93) involved lower limb trauma and 30.3% (n = 37) upper limb trauma. Emergency general extremity referrals increased from an average of 65/year to 484/year in the period 2011 to 2013, whilst plastics operative workload increased from an average of 53 cases/year to 407/year in the same period. This represents a more than sevenfold increase in the plastic surgery operative workload at our centre.
Conclusion
There has been a dramatic increase in emergency plastic surgery activity following designation of major trauma centre status at our centre. Understanding the epidemiology of plastic surgery is vital to improve service design, postgraduate training in the specialty, and workforce provision [1].
References
Khan A, Yeates D, Goodacre T, Goldacre M: Trends over time and geographical variation in admission rates for plastic surgery in England. J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg. 2010, 63: 1962-1971. 10.1016/j.bjps.2010.02.030.
Jalali M, Loughnane F, Winterton R: Trauma management within UK plastic surgery units. J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg. 2011, 64 (4): 558-559. 10.1016/j.bjps.2010.08.019.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Open Access  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
About this article
Cite this article
Hendrickson, S.A., Osei-Kuffour, D., Rahman, K. et al. Changing landscapes for plastic surgery: the effect of the Major Trauma Network on emergency operative workload. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med 23 (Suppl 2), O1 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1186/1757-7241-23-S2-O1
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1757-7241-23-S2-O1
Keywords
- Service Design
- Postgraduate Training
- Sevenfold Increase
- General Extremity
- Major Trauma Centre