2014 Volume 34 Issue 5 Pages 975-980
Acute Care Surgery (ACS) is a new concept of surgery which includes the three specialties of “trauma surgery”, “surgical intensive care”, and “emergency general surgery”. However, there is no formal curriculum or educational institutions in Japan, and it is still unclear how to practice ACS, and how to educate young surgeons in the skills required for ACS. We performed 222 emergency surgeries in 2011 to 2013, and in 167 trauma cases, we achieved an overall survival rate better than 73.6% compared with the predicted rate of 65.8%. In our three-year experience in aggressive trauma resuscitation and patient collection from a wide catchment area with the emergency helicopter airlift system, sufficient number of severe trauma cases was provided to educate acute care surgeons (20 cases per year) and surgical fellows (10 cases per 3 months). From such a point of view, we think that our department could act as a model for an Acute Care Surgery educational institution.
