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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2016. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Crit Care Med. Feb 4, 2016; 5(1): 12-16
Published online Feb 4, 2016. doi: 10.5492/wjccm.v5.i1.12
Advanced trauma life support training: How useful it is?
Fikri M Abu-Zidan
Fikri M Abu-Zidan, Department of Surgery, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, PO BOX 17666, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
Author contributions: Abu-Zidan FM had the idea, critically read the literature, drew the images, wrote the paper, and approved its final version.
Conflict-of-interest statement: None declared by the author.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Fikri M Abu-Zidan, MD, FACS, FRCS, PhD, Dip Applied Statistics, Professor, Acute Care Surgeon, Point-of-Care Sonographer, Statistical Consultant, Department of Surgery, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University, Tawam Roundabout, Tawam Street, PO BOX 17666, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates. fabuzidan@uaeu.ac.ae
Telephone: +971-50-8335390 Fax: +971-50-7672067
Received: July 22, 2015
Peer-review started: July 24, 2015
First decision: September 28, 2015
Revised: October 7, 2015
Accepted: November 24, 2015
Article in press: November 25, 2015
Published online: February 4, 2016
Processing time: 185 Days and 14.1 Hours
Abstract

We have tried in a recently published systematic review (World J of Surg 2014; 38: 322-329) to study the educational value of advanced trauma life support (ATLS) courses and whether they improve survival of multiple trauma patients. This Frontier article summarizes what we have learned and reflects on future perspectives in this important area. Our recently published systematic review has shown that ATLS training is very useful from an educational point view. It significantly increased knowledge, and improved practical skills and the critical decision making process in managing multiple trauma patients. These positive changes were evident in a wide range of learners including undergraduate medical students and postgraduate residents from different subspecialties. In contrast, clear evidence that ATLS training reduces trauma death is lacking. It is obvious that it is almost impossible to perform randomized controlled trials to study the effect of ATLS courses on trauma mortality. Studying factors predicting trauma mortality is a very complex issue. Accordingly, trauma mortality does not depend solely on ATLS training but on other important factors, like presence of well-developed trauma systems including advanced pre-hospital care. We think that the way to answer whether ATLS training improves survival is to perform large prospective cohort studies of high quality data and use advanced statistical modelling.

Keywords: Advanced trauma life support; Education; Course; Training; Death

Core tip: We recommend teaching advanced trauma life support (ATLS) courses for doctors who may treat multiple trauma patients in their setting. Large prospective cohort studies of high quality data are needed to evaluate the impact of ATLS training on trauma death rates and disability.