SF General Hospital’s Trauma Unit Responds to Region’s Biggest Disasters

UCSF News reports on the efforts of the trauma  team at San Francisco General Hospital that treated victims of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 that crashed while landing in San Francisco in July 2013. The team included UCSF Department of Surgery trauma surgeons M. Margaret Knudson, M.D. and Andre Campbell, M.D., and Rachael A. Callcut, M.D., M.S.P.H.. They arrived at SFGH within hours of the disaster:

On the morning of July 6, M. Margaret Knudson, MD, chief of surgery at SFGH, worked with Campbell and others on site to begin assembling a team that would be ready to triage patients upon their arrival. Knudson used lessons she learned as a visiting surgeon treating injured soldiers at both Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Balad Air Force Hospital in Iraq to quickly treat the most critically injured.

In the first eight hours, the radiology team had read more than 70 CT and MRI scans and well beyond the average number of X-rays.

“This was the biggest single disaster that this hospital has ever had to deal with, but it’s also where the trauma team gets to shine,” Campbell said. “The importance of a Level 1 Trauma Center comes to the forefront in emergencies such as this, because we are able to provide all the services a patient needs with a rapid, coordinated response. It truly is a team effort.”