The ASA Committee on Trauma and Emergency Preparedness (COTEP) was established to provide direction to ASA’s efforts on improving its members’ emergency preparedness and to educate its members on the care of patients who have sustained traumatic injury, the leading cause of death in people under 45 years of age.
COTEP increasingly recognizes that more emphasis should be placed on “Prevention and Mitigation,” the first of the four components of emergency preparedness (Figure 1). If we truly want to decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with traumatic injury, we as physician anesthesiologists must be more visible and vocal in addressing the major causes of traumatic injury, including vehicular crashes and violence from all causes. At a most fundamental level, during the preoperative interview with our patient, if we become aware that our patient bicycles for exercise, is it asking too much to remind our patient of the importance...
