Talk:Trauma surgery

"Unoperative in nature" ?

The last sentence reads:

"As trauma surgery has increasingly become unoperative in nature, its popularity amongst medical students has fallen drastically."

What does "unoperative in nature" mean? That one can't operate on the patients? Did trauma surgery used to be "operative"? Why did it change? -- noosphere 08:04, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

"Unoperative" simply means that trauma ?????fkjsfjsjfs surgeons don't get to operate as much as other surgical specialties. At one point trauma surgeons were very useful, particularly in the military, where you'd have patients presenting with all sorts of injury. A single surgeon who could treat many different injuries was obviously very useful. However, in civilian health care a trauma surgeon’s job is to merely stabilize the patient (keep the patient alive), preferably not actually fix the injury until a specialist arrives, and unfortunately in many cases "stabilization" simply does not involve any kind of surgery.

In medicine there is a joke that the trauma surgeon merely baby-sits the patient until the real specialist arrives. This is especially evident in big city hospitals, where the hospital would really prefer the patient to be treated by a specialist surgeon; neurosurgeon, vascular surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, etc. and not a trauma surgeon. However, on busy days or when a specialist is unavailable, a trauma surgeon will perform general surgery procedures; an emergency tracheotomy or appendectomy for example (sometimes much more difficult procedures). So yes, trauma surgeons do get to operate sometimes, just not as much as they used to, especially in civilian health care. I’m not sure whether trauma surgeons are still used in the military. --71.112.146.27 02:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I have to disagree completely here. I am a trauma surgeon, and I personally performed over 250 operative cases in the OR alone over the preceeding 12 months from July 2007 to June 2008. That is more than any general, non-trauma surgeon in the hospital. I am trained to care for patients who have traumatic injuries. The phrase means that many injuries which were managed with operations in the past, are managed now without an operation. For example, in the past, all liver injuries went to the OR for attempt at control of the bleeding. Many patients died from this. Now we know that the vast majority of liver injuries do not need an operation, and can be managed just fine without an operation. And the term is "non operative" not "unoperative". I do not think that what I do is a joke to other specialists. Management of the significantly injured requires training and expertise that can't be obtained by general training. A patient managed by multiple "specialists" will do worse than one patient being managed by one physician who coordinates the care among the specialists. I don't consider this babysitting. I know more about lung injury than a pulmonologist, I know more about traumatic induced renal failure than a nephrologist, I know more about traumatic liver injury than a hepatologist, and I know more about traumatic brain injury than a neurologist. No big city hospital would prefer that their injured patient is managed by a specialist over a trauma surgeon. I can do general surgical procedures as well as traumatic surgical procedures, and not just during the day. To post such nonsense above is irresponsible and juvenile. Ensure that when you post such drivel, that you have your facts straight. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.227.62.2 (talk) 18:01, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Trauma/injury redirection debate

Mschamberlain (talk) 22:31, 9 July 2014 (UTC)