SurgSpace / Specialties / Trauma & Acute Care Surgery
Trauma & Acute Care Surgery
Time-critical operative care of the injured patient: the primary survey that finds the killer first, damage control that trades anatomy for physiology, and the discipline of doing the least surgery that keeps someone alive tonight so the right surgery can happen tomorrow.
Read the scan
Imaging
See the study, interpret it, then answer the surgical question.
The studies that shape surgical decision-making. Not a radiology curriculum: what the scan changes about the plan, then practice reading it.
Practice the image
Thirty seconds in the trauma bay
Cyclist versus car, left flank bruising, BP 88 improving then drifting down. FAST examination. (Fictional educational case.)
Synthetic educational image · schematic FAST view for trauma practice
Find free fluid in the hepatorenal recess and rehearse what a positive scan means in an unstable patient: an operating theatre answer, in under a minute.
What each study decides
Investigations
eFAST
- Four abdominal windows plus both pleural spaces and the pericardium, answered in the bay in under three minutes: free fluid yes or no, not what organ tore.
- A positive scan in an unstable patient is an operating theatre answer; a negative scan excludes nothing and repeats are free.
Trauma CT (pan-scan)
- The stable patient's map: grades solid-organ injury, finds the contrast blush that sends a pelvis to angiography, and clears what examination cannot.
- It is a hallway with a door at each end: only patients whose physiology can afford the corridor belong inside it.
Lactate, gas and viscoelastic testing
- Lactate and base deficit measure the shock the blood pressure is hiding, and their clearance measures the resuscitation.
- Viscoelastic tests (ROTEM or TEG) turn 'coagulopathic' into a recipe: which factor, which product, how much.
Pelvic X-ray
- One film in the bay answers whether the ring is disrupted and whether the binder has reduced it.
- Taken through the binder if one is on: the reduction is the point, not the pristine image.
Hub shaped by the Surgical Specialties Lead with the Trauma surgery reviewer (open seat). Images and videos carry their source; educational use for supervised learning, not clinical guidance.