In the past decade numerous trends and influences have caused organized trauma surgery to re-examine our role in the care of all acutely ill surgical patients and the training of future general surgeons who will care for these patients.1 In this article we’ll briefly review the influences that brought us to this point, the issues we feel need to be addressed, and the solution that trauma surgery has proposed. In many ways, we believe these trends parallel the influences that led to the development of the hospitalists and, thus, call for a surgical equivalent.
Surgical Trends
The development of laparoscopic surgery has had profound influence on surgical practice. Cholecystectomies and appendectomies are generally 23-hour admissions. Even bariatric surgery is now little more than outpatient surgery, with the average length of stay at two days. Along with laparoscopy, breast surgery is now one of the fastest growing surgical subspecialties.
Many surgeons have tailored their practices to a largely outpatient base. There has been an explosion of free-standing surgery centers with a large shift of this low acuity patient population away from hospitals. This follows an overall shift in medicine to ambulatory practice, which is now projected to increase by 24% over the next five to 10 years. Thus, fewer and fewer surgeons have large inpatient practices. There is growing concern about the reluctance of many surgeons to deal with complex, high acuity patients. The obvious exceptions are transplant and trauma surgeons.
In the past decade profound changes in trauma care have also affected the practices of surgeons and the career choices of surgical residents.2 Following the peak of gun-related violence in the early 1990s, there has been a steady and significant decline in penetrating trauma with a concomitant decrease in operations. Slow but steady improvement in motor vehicle passive safety devices has also decreased the incidence of serious injury to the torso following car crashes.
When a solid organ (liver, spleen, kidney) injury does occur after car crash, fall, or assault, the management has largely shifted away from exploratory laparotomy to non-operative management. This has been made possible by improved imaging techniques, careful monitoring in the ICU and judicious use of interventional radiologic techniques of embolization and percutaneous drainage. Currently, some 60% to 80% of liver and spleen injuries are treated with observation or interventional techniques. Although most surgical residents enjoy the challenges of both trauma surgery and critical care, the decline in operative opportunities has limited the appeal of trauma/critical care as a career choice.2
Many trauma surgeons feel there is a convergence of these two issues—a group of patients that may be underserved and an opportunity to enhance the training and desirability of caring for acutely ill surgical patients.3-5 Either through years of experience or formal training, the vast majority of trauma surgeons are highly experienced in evaluating, operating upon, and providing post-operative care for critically ill and injured patients. In fact, the majority of surgical critical care fellowships are based at level 1 trauma centers and are run primarily by trauma surgeons. Thus, trauma surgeons are ideally situated to address these issues.
[A fellowship] all starts with a core group of people dedicated to hospital medicine. You need a group of people who see the future of hospital medicine and what it can be and who want to dive into different aspects of it. This is the minimum criteria for a successful hospitalist fellowship program.
—Rohit Uppal, MD, MBA