A series of articles to be published in the Dallas Morning News beginning today, November 28, 2023, illuminates the public health crisis that trauma surgeons have long lived and decried: the thousands of Americans dying from uncontrolled bleeding, when their deaths are preventable. Investigative reporter Lauren Caruba spent more than two years interviewing trauma surgeons, emergency physicians, paramedics, nurses, and family members and studying the fractured trauma system and inaction by Congress that perpetuates the crisis.

In the initial installment, Caruba helps laypeople understand what hemorrhaging is and why blood loss has such rapid and deadly consequences. She explains how the civilian trauma system has yet to widely adopt the advancements made in the treatment of wounded soldiers, and how decades’ worth of advocating has yet to result in a dedicated center for trauma research at the NIH that could coalesce resources and standardize guidance and treatments.

Caruba names eight key takeaways from her investigation:

1. Trauma is deadly
2. Many trauma deaths could be prevented
3. Blood loss is a health crisis
4. Paramedics are unequipped to fully treat major blood loss
5. Blood transfusions often come too late
6. U.S. trauma care is inequitable
7. Blood programs can save lives
8. Prehospital blood remains largely unavailable

CNTR urges the trauma community to follow the series this week and to amplify it as widely as possible to raise awareness of this public health crisis.