A prospective observational study using an interrupted time-series design to evaluate the effect of pre-hospital notification on trauma patients arriving at a trauma centre by ambulance, in India

This is a longitudinal prospective cohort study of injured patients being transported by ambulance to the major trauma centre study sites. In the pre-intervention phase, prospective data on patients will be collected on pre-hospital assessment, notification, in-hospital assessment, management and outcomes and recorded in a new tailored multi-hospital trauma registry. All injured patients arriving by ambulance and allocated to a red or yellow priority category will be eligible for inclusion. The intervention will be a pre-hospital notification application in the form of an Android program that will be used by ambulance clinicians to notify emergency departments of selected hospitals of an impending arrival of a patient. The application will use a simple algorithm based on trauma triage principles developed by the Australia-India Trauma System Collaboration (AITSC). The proportion of severely injured patients arriving to hospital after notification will be the primary outcome measure with a target of 70%. Secondary outcomes evaluated will be availability of a trauma cubicle, presence of a trauma team on patient arrival, time to first chest x-ray and in-hospital mortality.

Inclusion Criteria: All injured patients arriving by ambulance and allocated to a red (1st) or yellow (2nd) priority category will be eligible for inclusion. Data will be collected prospectively by trained data collectors positioned in the trauma centres.

Retrospective inclusion will be continued for all screened patients presenting to any of the included hospitals with injury (including near-drowning) as the primary diagnosis and with at least one of the following criteria:

1. Admission to hospital
2. Death after triage but before admission
3. Dead on arrival

Exclusion criteria: Patients meeting screening criteria will be subsequently excluded if they meet any of the following criteria:

1. Dead at scene
2. Alive at triage but not admitted to hospital (discharged alive)
3. Isolated poisoning
4. Isolated burns
5. Single digit finger or toe amputations (unless of the thumb or great toe), only

The study will be conducted in four major trauma centres in India. The Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Center, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi admits approximately 4000 injured patients per year. Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) Hospital is a 1,500-bed hospital situated in the National Capital Region of Delhi, India, with a trauma census of approx. 1500 per year. The Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General (LTMG) Hospital is a Level I trauma centre, which caters to the megapolis of Mumbai and receives about 1000 injured patients per year. The Sheth Vadilal Sarabhai General (VS) Hospital caters to areas in and around Ahmedabad with an average annual admission secondary to trauma of about 1200/year.