4trauma
Birmingham
Professor of Clinical Traumatology, Sir Keith Porter is involved in the
treatment of some of University Hospital Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust’s (UHB)
most complex injury cases. He trained at St Thomas’ Hospital in London in the
1970s before being jointly appointed at the Birmingham Accident Hospital and
Selly Oak Hospital in April 1986. He was awarded a professorship by UHB, the
University of Birmingham and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine in 2005 and
was knighted for his role in developing trauma treatment for injured British
soldiers in 2010. I am proud of the achievements from the robust
civilian-military partnership between the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham
and the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, during the last decade. There have
been significant advances in pre hospital care with critical care interventions
and blood delivered by the MERT team and the introduction of haemostatic
resuscitation and damage control principles in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, such
that patients have progressively survived more severe injuries in the last
decade particularly as the IED have become more sophisticated and destructive.
Birmingham has responded and moved forward the boundaries of continued
resuscitation, wound surgery and surgical reconstruction using concepts and
techniques that are not in war textbooks and have required bespoke and
innovative solutions. Landmark advances have included debridement strategies,
proactively managing the continuing inflammatory response, defining and
understanding complex microbiological challenges including fungal infections and
devising bespoke surgical solutions particularly for soft tissue loss. Integral
to improving functional outcome has been our close working with Headley Court.
Clinicians have worked closely with DSDL, defence research and the NIHRSRMC to
come up with solutions to the research questions these complex patient generate.
With several hundred unexpected survivors from recent campaigns, QEHB is proud
of the part it has played in the chain of care and is working with the RCDM and
defence medical services to capture the lessons learnt in what will be a live
and evolving document.
