Prehospital Blood Transfusion Programs
Severe bleeding is the leading cause of preventable death among trauma patients, including those involved in a motor-vehicle crash. Scientific evidence makes clear that providing blood at the scene—before arrival at the hospital—can save many more lives. For every minute of delay in administering prehospital blood to a trauma patient, mortality increases by 11%.
What Is a Prehospital Blood Transfusion Program?
A prehospital blood transfusion program enables EMS agencies to supply lifesaving blood and/or blood components to trauma patients and anyone else who may need it at the scene of an incident.
Why Establish a Prehospital Blood Transfusion Program?
The benefits of adding prehospital blood transfusion programs in your community can be profound. Both military and civilian scientific research makes clear that many lives could be saved if blood was delivered sooner to those experiencing trauma. In particular, there’s an opportunity to offer lifesaving blood as part of improving post-crash care, one of five parts of a Safe System Approach to eliminating roadway deaths.
A joint position statement from the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, the American College of Emergency Physicians and the National Association of EMS Physicians published in July 2023 in the Annals of Emergency Medicine cites research showing that “prehospital blood product resuscitation has demonstrated greater than predicted survival with a 37% reduction in 30-day mortality among severely injured civilian patients.”
Three Benefits of a Prehospital Blood Transfusion Program
By bringing whole blood transfusions to the point of injury, EMS teams can act faster, stabilize critical patients sooner, and ultimately save more lives.
Improved patient outcomes – Trauma patients who received whole blood in the field were four times more likely to survive than those who did not.
Enhanced EMS capabilities – A prehospital blood transfusion program allows clinicians to more quickly and efficiently stabilize complex trauma patients.
Faster progress toward reducing roadway fatalities – Between 2013 and 2022, fatal traffic crashes increased by 30%. As trauma-related deaths rise, giving emergency responders the ability to administer blood before patients reach the hospital can significantly improve survival rates.
What Does a Prehospital Blood Transfusion Program Look Like?
Around the country, EMS organizations are creating a prehospital blood transfusion program to serve their trauma patients. Some are established in a single agency, while others serve a region, which may increase the number of stakeholders who will support the effort, like 911 centers, which may dispatch prehospital blood resources to an incident.
Use the resources below to better understand how others approach their prehospital blood transfusion program to help find the way that will work best for you. It’s important, too, to understand how your state’s EMS scope of practice may need to change to allow clinicians to administer blood as well as possible related changes to legislation and licensure.