The teams were trained in 2006, following the guidelines established by the Ministry of Health [9]. The Catanduva CB operates from a single base located in check details the center of the city, where the USB vehicle is housed, together with vehicles for specialized use in various types of rescue and fire fighting; three firefighters are on call at all times. The study involved two groups of individuals: the first consisted of patients treated in APH by the SAMU team, which were divided into two subgroups:

SAMU – USB and SAMU – USA. The second group consisted of APH patients brought in by the CB team. The reference population was comprised of victims of traumatic injury aged 18 years or over. All patients transported by SAMU or CB click here in the city of Catanduva during the period January 1st to December 31st 2007, and taken to a tertiary care hospital, were included in this analysis. Exclusion criteria were: patients transported to the hospital by other means, non-inclusion of the study parameters on the patient’s admission form; patients aged under 18; and patients who died on arrival in the emergency room (death on arrival). The variables studied were: gender; age; type of injury; service that provided the pre-hospital care, and type of vehicle used to transport the patient; time T1, in minutes,

from the initial call out of the arrival of the vehicle at the scene of the incident; time T2, in minutes, from the Thymidine kinase initial call out to the patient’s arrival at the hospital unit. The following clinical data were evaluated and compared: the Revised Trauma Score (RTS) [12]; the Injury Severity Score (ISS) [13]; the probability of survival (Trauma and Injury Severity Score or TRISS) [14]; the causes of death and their classification. Deaths were classified as: preventable;

potentially preventable (serious injuries, but not fatal, evaluation and treatment generally adequate, probability of survival less than 50% and greater than 25% or error in treatment, possibly influencing the outcome, directly or indirectly); and totally preventable [11]. The indices calculated were RTS, ISS and TRISS. The RTS was calculated based on the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), systolic blood pressure (SBP) and respiratory rate, the maximum value being 7.84. The ISS quantifies the severity of anatomical lesions in different body segments, with a maximum value of 75. Thus, ISS >10 represents moderate and severe anatomical lesions, while ISS >25 indicates very serious injuries. The TRISS represents the probability that the injured patient will survive, and is based on the RTS, ISS, patient’s age and type of injury (blunt trauma or penetrating trauma). The patients were grouped, according to their physiological condition, as normal (maximum RTS of 7.84) or altered (RTS with a loss of score in any of the three parameters).