Advances and Challenges in Prehospital Emergency Care
A special issue of Medicina (ISSN 1648-9144). This special issue belongs to the section "Intensive Care/ Anesthesiology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 441
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Prehospital emergency care is the first step in the continuum of care for critically ill patients and is a key determinant of patient outcomes. Early intervention in the prehospital environment is essential to reduce preventable deaths and downstream complications for patients with time-critical medical emergencies, including polytrauma, haemorrhagic shock, traumatic brain injury, cardiac arrest, burns, and stroke. Providing effective prehospital emergency care is particularly challenging for the 3.45 billion residents of rural and remote environments globally who are disadvantaged by prolonged prehospital times and delays to definitive hospital care. This is evidenced by the significant and continual discrepancies in outcomes for these patients, including higher morbidity and mortality rates. Despite advances, even in urban areas, it has been estimated that >20% of trauma deaths had potentially survivable injuries, while survival rates for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest remain persistently low at <10%. Recent decades have seen the development and evolution of integrated and coordinated Emergency Medical Services (EMS) systems around the world with a view to improve the efficiency and quality of prehospital emergency care. Nonetheless, challenges remain, and it is imperative we continue to assess, learn, and update. Advances from military systems and casualty care will likely remain a key resource for evidence-based interventions, procedures, and guidelines applicable for prehospital civilian critical care. Optimising prehospital emergency care is key for ensuring good patient outcomes and will not be achieved without innovation and continual improvement.
We will solicit original research articles, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and reviews pertaining to these topics.
Dr. Hayley L. Letson
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- prehospital
- trauma
- injury
- traumatic brain injury
- burns
- cardiac arrest
- stroke
- rural/remote
- emergency
- resuscitation
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