Excellence in Prehospital Injury Care (EPIC)

Why is the EPIC Project important?

Each year, an estimated 1.7 million people sustain a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) annually. Of them:

• 52,000 die,
• 275,000 are hospitalized, and
• 1.365 million, nearly 80%, are treated and released from an emergency department.

TBI is a contributing factor to a third (30.5%) of all injury-related deaths in the United States.¹

There is growing evidence that the management of TBI in the early minutes after injury profoundly impacts outcome. EMS operates in the ultra-acute setting, usually providing the first care for TBI victims when treatment matters the most. Reports on implementation of evidence-based TBI treatment guidelines inside the hospital are very promising. However, no studies to date have evaluated their impact in the prehospital setting.

The EMS agencies of Arizona have already proven their ability to dramatically improve cardiac arrest survival and, thus, Arizona was selected by the National Institutes of Health to do the same with TBI.

References

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, http://www.cdc.gov/traumaticbraininjury/statistics.html Statistics for 2010.