For the last five years, first responders all over the world have been watching San Antonio.
"San Antonio was one of the first and still is the only metropolitan EMS system to carry blood in America," said Dr. CJ Winckler, associate clinical professor in the department of emergency health sciences and the department of emergency medicine at UT Health San Antonio, and deputy medical director of the San Antonio Fire Department. He said eight city EMS vehicles carry whole blood that can be transfused into people who might otherwise bleed to death before they get to the hospital.
"We have transfused blunt hemorrhagic shock patients, which are quite often car wrecks. We have transfused penetrating trauma, which is usually gunshot wounds or knife stab wounds. We had a young mother who was on her fourth pregnancy, and she was bleeding out. She was mostly unresponsive in a bathtub," he said. "We're showing that we have a fourfold increase in saving blunt trauma patients lives so four times four times the life saved. So certainly that is an amazing outcome."
Winckler said what they’ve learned over the last five years is invaluable.
"The rest of the country, actually, the rest of the world is looking at us for guidance," he said. "And we've been very fortunate to be able to train a whole lot of folks in America and beyond about how to start a prehospital blood program."
Science & Medicine is a collaboration between TPR and The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio that explores how scientific discovery in San Antonio advances the way medicine is practiced everywhere.
