From the classroom to the emergency room, O.R. and beyond. You're joining Trauma ICU Rounds with your host, Dr. Dennis Kim.

I'd like to welcome you back to trauma ICU rounds. I'm your host, Dr. Dennis Kim. I'm an associate professor of clinical surgery at the David Geffen School of Medicine at

UCLA and trauma surgeon slash medical director of the trauma surgical ICU here at Harbor, UCLA Medical

Center in South Los Angeles. I am really excited to get season two of trauma ICU rounds kicked off.

And I want to thank you for joining us and making this podcast such a success.

The underlying theme for this season is going to be acute care surgery.

And that's not to say that we're going to focus specifically on emergency general surgery.

In fact, in a couple of weeks, we're going to have Dr. Walt Biffel join us to talk about

blunt cerebral vascular injury.

And the topic of today's rounds, in fact, is probably more of a trauma topic than it is

ACS.

Today on rounds, we're discussing a clinical condition that I've personally been burnt by

and that I've seen fool many, many others, either because the diagnosis wasn't entertained,

or if it was, there were delays either in regards to making a definitive diagnosis due to a misunderstanding

of the pathophysiology or usefulness or reliance on the physical exam.

And that condition is acute extremity compartment syndrome.

And this truly is an acute surgical emergency.

And early diagnosis really does require a really high index of suspicion.

If there's one point I want you to walk away from rounds today, it's that if you suspect it, if you think that a patient could potentially have acute extremity compartment syndrome, do something about it.

That do may be taking an actual intra-compartmental pressure check or simply performing fasciotomies. But if you think someone's

got it, do something about it. If you don't, bad things are bound to happen. This includes

things like loss of limb function, permanent disability, deformity, contractors, multiple organ dysfunction syndrome, the development

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