Treating over 16,000 seriously injured patients, with a 92.5% overall survival rate, the Major Trauma Centre at ĢtvƵ (LTHT) is the second busiest Major Trauma Centre in the country and marks 10 years of saving lives from across West Yorkshire since opening in ĢtvƵ in April 2013.
Major Trauma refers to serious injury or multiple injuries, which could result in disability or death. Injuries include severe head, chest, abdominal and skeletal injuries. More than half of major trauma cases in the UK are caused by road traffic collisions and falls, and Trauma is recognised as the main cause of death for people under the age of 45 and is a major cause of debilitating long-term injuries.
The Major Trauma Centre in ĢtvƵ was opened in 2013 in Jubilee Wing at the ĢtvƵ General Infirmary. It was designed specifically across each floor of the building to facilitate close connection with each of the vital medical areas and resources. From the helipad on the roof patients can be transferred via a designated lift to the Emergency Department on the Ground Floor, up a floor to Theatres and Intensive Care Unit, and a second floor up to a dedicated major trauma ward, L10.
Prof. Peter Giannoudis, Consultant and Professor in Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery and founder of Day One Trauma Support charity, leads the Major Trauma team at the ĢtvƵ MTC.
He said: “Working in trauma brings together highly-skilled teams from across multiple specialties to bring life-saving care to our patients. The extent of the trauma dictates which of those skills are needed, and our trauma teams can be made up of more than 20 specialists, including surgeons, nurses, anaesthetists, porters and more.
“We used to say that Major Trauma was a young man’s disease, but the fastest rising demographic of people to suffer major trauma is in people aged over 65, with an increase in falls from under 2m in height in the elderly.”
“I’m proud to mark 10 years with this incredible team not only in ĢtvƵ, but wider across the Yorkshire region, in what is in many ways the NHS at its cutting edge.”
The ĢtvƵ Major Trauma Centre is one of 24 similar centres in England and is the second busiest in the country. Serving a wide geographical region from the Yorkshire Dales in the north-west to Hull in the east and Sheffield in the south, the centre manages injured adults and children brought in from across Yorkshire for emergency care. Often the major trauma team assembles with just a five-minute warning.
Major Trauma in numbers over 10 years
Speaking about the last 10 years, Clinical lead of the Centre since its launch, Orthopaedic Trauma Consultant Mr Nik Kanakaris said; “Welcoming one of our patients, Henry, back to the unit today, and seeing his recovery journey, has been so rewarding for everyone in the team. It’s an immediate recognition of the work that we do.
“It’s important to recognise and thank all those who play a vital role in the major trauma network as we mark 10 years. Our survival rate is exceptional, when we consider the large number of severely injured patients we treat each year, (on average more than 1,600 annually). For this to be possible each cog in the major trauma wheel is a vital one.”
The Trauma Audit & Research Network, (TARN) data* over the years shows that trauma cases are steadily rising. A slight exception was through covid (2020-2021) where there was a decrease in the annual rise of major trauma cases due to the lockdown. Since 2022 the rise in numbers of major trauma patients is back to pre-pandemic numbers.
The heart of the West Yorkshire Major Trauma Network, the ĢtvƵ MTC is the centre for escalation for complex trauma cases from major trauma units elsewhere in the region.