From the classroom to the emergency room, OR and beyond.

You're joining trauma ICU rounds with your host, Dr. Dennis Kim.

Welcome to trauma ICU rounds.

I am very excited for today's episode.

For those of you that follow the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, last

week the updated guidelines to reduce venous thrombo embolism, or VTE, in trauma patients, was

released, and this critical decisions algorithm comes to us from the Western Trauma Association,

which just happens to be the last meeting that I was fortunate enough to attend in person pre-COVID.

This is a really fantastically well-written and well-presented guideline that takes readers through the modern approach to VTE prophylaxis

from the time of admission through discharge and tackle some controversial, as well as not-so-controversial

topics in VTE management, from the appropriate initial dose of chemoporphylaxis to management

of patient population subsets at risk for bleeding complications, such as traumatic brain injury,

as well as solid organ injuries, as well as the diminishing

role of IVC filters in trauma patients.

The first author on this paper is Dr. Eric Lay, who is a professor of surgery and the medical

director of the surgical ICU at Cedar Sinai Medical Center here in Los Angeles, California.

Eric is the program director of the Surgical Critical Care Fellowship, and he is extensively

published and is the recipient of numerous research grants and funding from organizations

like the DoD as well as the AAST.

Speaking of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma a few years back,

Eric presented the results of a multi-center prospective observational study of beta blockers

and critically ill patients with traumatic brain injury, which I continue to cite on rounds in the ICU to this day.

...