Background: Tourniquet use by Emergency Medical Services (EMS) can be life saving for severely injured patients. The adoption of this intervention is not well described in civilian settings. This study describes patterns and trends of tourniquet use by civilian EMS and identifies predictors of such use.
Methods: A retrospective study of four consecutive releases of the U.S. National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) public research dataset (2011-14) was conducted. Descriptive analysis was performed to compare two groups of EMS activations for injuries with or without tourniquet application. This was followed by multivariate logistic regression to identify predictors of tourniquet use.
Results: A total of 2,048 tourniquet applications were documented among all EMS activations for injured patients (N = 10,366,537) yielding a prevalence of 0.2 per 1,000 EMS activations. Tourniquets were mainly applied in young (mean age 44.0 ± 21.1 years) male patients (76.5%) in urban and suburban EMS activations (86.4%) and by advanced life support (ALS) EMS services (81.6%). Most common complaints reported by dispatch for EMS activations with tourniquet use were Traumatic injury (25.3%), Hemorrhage/laceration (23.5%), and Traffic accident (16.8%) with injuries mainly related to Stabbing/Accidental cutting (20.3%), Falls (17.1%), and Motor vehicle traffic accident (11.5%). Upper extremity injuries (39.6%) were more common than Lower extremity injuries (27.3%). The providers' primary impression was predominantly Traumatic injury (92.8%), and patients' primary symptoms were mainly Bleeding (50.4%) and Wound (28.7%). All prehospital time intervals except on-scene time interval were significantly shorter in the group with tourniquets compared to the group without tourniquets (p < 0.05). Reported prevalence of tourniquet use by EMS (per 1,000 EMS injury activations) increased from 2011 to 2012 then stabilized over the following years (2012-14). Significant predictors of tourniquet use reported by the provider were identified and included demographic characteristics, EMS agency type, specific complaints, injury cause, injury anatomic location, chief complaint organ system, and primary symptom.
Conclusion: Reported tourniquet use by EMS for injured patients in the U.S. is low. Increasing adoption mainly by urban services was noted. Predictors for tourniquet use in civilian trauma were identified. Establishing the effectiveness of this intervention by comparing patient outcomes is needed. Key words: emergency medical services; prehospital; tourniquet; injury; NEMSIS; hemorrhage.