Prehospital amputation : an experimental comparison of techniques

Abstract

"Prehospital limb amputation is a rare, but potentially lifesaving intervention. When adequate resuscitation is not possible due to difficult patient access, hemodynamically unstable patients may benefit from an emergent prehospital amputation. There have been a limited number of case reports detailing prehospital amputation. Furthermore, there has only been one experimental trial. Leech et al. explored prehospital-friendly methods of amputation on human cadavers; however, due to a small sample size of four trials, the data has limited reliability."--Introduction.