The Role of Prehospital eFAST in Accelerating Time to Diagnostics or Definitive Treatment in the Emergency Department

Status

Completed

Phases

Unknown

Study type

Observational

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT04934384

Enrollment

199

Registered

2021-06-22

Start date

2021-06-25

Completion date

2021-07-26

Last updated

2021-08-04

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Liver Injury, Trauma Abdomen, Trauma Splenic

Keywords

trauma, liver, spleen

Brief summary

Actual literature has demonstrated that prehospital extended focused assessment sonography for trauma (eFAST) could impact on logistic and treatment decisions such as mode of transportation and choice of hospital destination. However, there are no data with regard to in-hospital effects of a positive prehospital eFAST. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of prehospital eFAST driven decisions on in hospital time-to-definitive diagnostics or time-to definitive treatment, whichever came first, in a level 1 trauma center. The goal is to define if this information could have a role in prioritizing patients' access to care in a population of abdominal trauma patients with A-AIS \> 1 and a documented liver or spleen injury.

Interventions

DIAGNOSTIC_TESTprehospital extended focused assessment sonography for trauma

Sonographic procedure performed in the prehospital environment aiming at evaluating peritoneal free fluid in trauma patients

Study design

Observational model

CASE_CONTROL

Time perspective

RETROSPECTIVE

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

18 Years to No maximum

Healthy volunteers

Inclusion criteria

* Patients admitted to emergency department with a ICD-9-CM diagnosis of traumatic liver or spleen injury (codes 8640x, 8641x, 8650x, 8651x) * Abdominal AIS ≥ 2 * CT scan or operating theatre admission performed within 180 minutes from ED admission

Exclusion criteria

* Death before CT scan or OR/Angio suite admission (missing primary outcome measure) * Transferred to other hospitals before CT scan or operating room admission * Missing data

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Time to definitive diagnostics or treatment	180 minutes	Time from the ED arrival to CT scan imaging or surgical intervention (whichever came first)

Secondary

Measure	Time frame	Description
Prehospital time	240 minutes	Time from EMS dispatch to ED arrival
Sensitivity and specificity of prehospital eFAST	240 minutes	Sensitivity and specificity of prehospital eFAST calculated considering ED eFAST as the gold standard measure

Countries

Italy

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026