The Future of Critical Care Medicine and Trauma Management in Small Animals

Introduction
Veterinary trauma patients account for up to 13% of admissions to small animal veterinary tertiary centres. Although the reported survival to discharge rate in dogs with traumatic injury is very good (85-91%), trauma is the second leading cause of death behind infectious disease for dogs under 1 year of age and neoplasia for dogs > 1 year of age. Unfortunately, much of the existing studies relating to veterinary trauma are retrospective in nature and quite limited in their scope – they are mostly descriptive.

Evidence-based protocols for the approach to treating animals sustaining severe trauma are lacking and some commonly employed techniques are directly extrapolated from the human literature on trauma despite the recognition that key differences exist in the types of trauma sustained. Additionally, there are differences in the availability of pre-hospital care, and in the medical and surgical approaches to certain types of injuries. It is obvious that there is a great need for large scale studies of animals that have sustained severe trauma so that we could develop true evidence-based treatment recommendations and protocols that that would greatly impact the outcome of trauma patients. Multi-institutional collaborative approach to gathering data on a large number of veterinary trauma patients is urgently needed. Such an undertaking requires organization, structure in order to ensure that the information is adequately collected and managed. This undertaking has been realized with the formation of the Veterinary Committee on Trauma (VetCOT) and the creation of a network of advanced hospitals that have been identified as Veterinary Trauma Centres.  [...]