Effects of Advanced Trauma Life Support® on Adult Trauma Patient Outcomes

NCT ID: NCT06321419

Last Updated: 2026-01-23

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

RECRUITING

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

4320 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2025-02-27

Study Completion Date

2029-11-30

Brief Summary

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Rationale:

Trauma is a massive global health issue. Many training programmes have been developed to help physicians in the initial management of trauma patients. Among these programmes, Advanced Trauma Life Support® (ATLS®) is the most popular, having trained over one million physicians worldwide. Despite its widespread use, there are no controlled trials showing that ATLS® improves patient outcomes. Multiple systematic reviews emphasise the need for such trials.

Aim:

To compare the effects of ATLS® training with standard care on outcomes in adult trauma patients.

Trial Population:

Adult trauma patients presenting to the emergency department of a participating hospital.

Eligibility Criteria:

Hospitals are secondary or tertiary hospitals in India that admit or refer/transfer for admission at least 400 patients with trauma per year. Clusters are one or more units of physicians providing initial trauma care in the emergency department of tertiary hospitals in India. Patients participants are adult trauma patients who presents to the emergency department of participating hospitals and are admitted or transferred for admission.

Ethical Considerations:

The study will use an opt-out consent approach for in-hospital collection of routinely recorded data, in which consent is presumed unless actively declined. Informed consent for non-routinely recorded data including out of hospital follow up will be obtained. Patients who are unconscious or lack a legally authorized representative will be included under a waiver of informed consent. Note that consent here refers to consent to data collection, as it will not be possible for patients to opt out from being subjected to the intervention. This approach is justified because the trial can be considered to involve only minimal risk and the data collection is non-invasive and mostly involve extracting routinely collected data from medical records.

Funding:

Swedish Research Council (reg. no. 2023-03128), Laerdal Foundation (reg. no. 2023-0297).

Special considerations:

This trial is not yet fully funded. The Trial Management Group has decided to proceed with the trial with the expectation that additional funding will be secured. The Joint Trial Steering and Data Monitoring Committee will be informed of the funding status at each meeting. If funding is not secured, the trial will be stopped. This will likely result in an underpowered trial. The justification for this decision is that the intervention is considered standard of care in many countries and the data collection is considered minimal risk. There is therefore a very small risk of harm to patient participants, but a potential direct benefit to those.

Detailed Description

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Conditions

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Wounds and Injuries

Study Design

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Allocation Method

RANDOMIZED

Intervention Model

CROSSOVER

Batched stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial. We will roll out the interventions to 30 clusters over six batches, so there will be five clusters in each batch. The clusters in each batch will be randomised to one of five implementation sequences, with one hospital randomised to each implementation sequence. All clusters will transition through three phases, first a standard care phase, then a one month transition phase during which the training is delivered, and finally an intervention phase, for a total of 13 months.
Primary Study Purpose

TREATMENT

Blinding Strategy

NONE

Study Groups

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Advanced Trauma Life Support

The intervention will be ATLS® training, a proprietary 2.5 day course teaching a standardised approach to trauma patient care using the concepts of a primary and secondary survey. Physicians will be trained in an accredited ATLS® training facility in India.

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

Advanced Trauma Life Support training

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) is a proprietary 2.5 day course teaching a standardised approach to trauma patient care using the concepts of a primary and secondary survey. The programme was developed by the Committee of Trauma of the American College of Surgeons. The course includes intial treatment and resuscitation, triage and interfacility transfers. Leaning is based on practical scenario-driven skill stations, lectures and includes a final performance proficiency evaluation. Physicians will be trained in an accredited ATLS training facility in India.

Standard care

Standard care varies across hospitals in India, but trauma patients are initially managed by casualty medical officers, surgical residents, or emergency medicine residents. They are mainly first- or second-year residents who resuscitate patients, perform interventions and refer patients for imaging or other investigations. Compared with other settings where a trauma team approach is adopted, nurses and other healthcare professionals are only involved to a limited extent during the initial management.

Group Type NO_INTERVENTION

No interventions assigned to this group

Interventions

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Advanced Trauma Life Support training

Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) is a proprietary 2.5 day course teaching a standardised approach to trauma patient care using the concepts of a primary and secondary survey. The programme was developed by the Committee of Trauma of the American College of Surgeons. The course includes intial treatment and resuscitation, triage and interfacility transfers. Leaning is based on practical scenario-driven skill stations, lectures and includes a final performance proficiency evaluation. Physicians will be trained in an accredited ATLS training facility in India.

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* age of at least 15 years;
* trauma occurred less than 48 hours before arrival at the hospital;
* present to the emergency department of participating hospitals, with a history of trauma defined as having any of the reasons listed in the International Classification of Diseases chapter XX as the reason for presenting;
* admitted or died between arrival at the hospital and admission, or referred/transferred from the emergency department of a participating hospital to another hospital for admission; and
* managed by a participating cluster in the emergency department.

Exclusion Criteria

* present with isolated limb injuries; or
* are directly admitted to a ward without being seen by a physician in the emergency department.
Minimum Eligible Age

15 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Sponsors

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The George Institute

OTHER

Sponsor Role collaborator

Karolinska Institutet

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Martin Gerdin

Principal Researcher

Responsibility Role PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Locations

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Assam Medical College & Hospital

Dibrugarh, Assam, India

Site Status RECRUITING

KEM Hospital

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Lokmanya Tilak Municipal General Hospital

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Hridaysamrat Balasaheb Thackre Mun. Medical college and Dr. R.N. Cooper Hospital

Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Holy Family Hospital

New Delhi, New Delhi, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Dayanand Medical College & Hospital

Ludhiana, Punjab, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Christian Medical College & Hospital

Ludhiana, Punjab, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences, Swami Rama Himalayan University

Dehradun, Uttarakhand, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research and Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial Hospital (IPGMER and SSKM Hospital)

Kolkata, West Bengal, India

Site Status RECRUITING

Government Medical College Hospital

Chandigarh, , India

Site Status RECRUITING

Countries

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India

Central Contacts

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Martin Gerdin Wärnberg, PhD

Role: CONTACT

+46708539598

Facility Contacts

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Jishan Ahmed

Role: primary

+919435031369

Monty Khajanchi

Role: primary

Vineet Kumar

Role: primary

+91 982023133

Aisvarya Kapoor

Role: primary

+919999139808

Jaspal Singh

Role: primary

+919815599527

Other Identifiers

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atls-vs-standard-care

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id

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