Prehospital Trauma Life Support for Companion Animals and 'Operational Canines'
This issue of the Journal of Veterinary Emergency and Critical Care features the Veterinary Committee on Trauma's (VetCOT) Prehospital Trauma Care Best Practice recommendations for dogs and cats. The guidelines were developed under the purview of ACVECC's VetCOT Prehospital Subcommittee that consists of subject matter experts in the various fields of prehospital medicine. For further information on VetCOT's overarching mission, readers are referred to the following website https:/sites.google.com/a/umn.edu/vetcot/home. These guidelines should be considered as best practice clinical recommendations for the most common veterinary conditions that may be encountered in a prehospital scenario. The guidelines are applicable to all populations of dogs and cats with special considerations provided for the distinct sub population of working dogs referred to as 'Operational Canines' or K9s (OpK9) Operational K9s encompass that special population of civilian working dogs specifically trained to serve society in a variety of settings and circumstances such as federal and civilian law enforcement (eg, Police K9s, US Marshals service) force protection (eg, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, Transportation Security Administration) and search and rescue (SAR) operations. This unique group of dogs distinguish themselves from other categories of 'working dogs' (eg, sports and agility, guide, therapy, sled dogs) as they continuously place themselves in harm's way to protect us, defend us, and preserve our freedoms. They have continuously proven to be a force multiplier in the success of many military, law enforcement, SAR, and humanitarian operations; therefore, the term "Operational Canine or OpK9" seems a more befitting term to distinguish this unique population of dogs from the rest of working dog community. The terms military working dogs (MWDs) and multipurpose canines (MPCs) specifically refer to the population of working dogs that serve the U.S. Armed Forces. Unintentional injuries still remains one of the leading causes of death worldwide in people 1 44 years of age.1 5 For civilian trauma and military combat casualties about 40 70% of post traumatic fatalities occur during the prehospital period before the casualty ever reaches a medical treatment facility.6 11 Many of these prehospital fatalities occur within minutes of the injury as a result of either massive exsanguination or severe brain injury.7 11 Unfortunately for this subset of patients, very little may be provided in the way of medical aid at the point of injury (POI) to change this proportion of prehospital deaths. On the other hand, approximately 20 25% of prehospital fatalities are due to what is termed 'preventable deaths, or deaths that can be prevented simply by implementing early and appropriate basic first aid techniques.10 16 For the human combat casualty, the three most commonly observed trauma related preventable deaths are: hemorrhage from extremity wounds, tension pneumothorax, and airway obstruction. The most common out of hospital preventable deaths for companion animals remains completely unknown. A retrospective analysis of 235 dogs presenting to a university teaching hospital for blunt trauma revealed that most dogs involved in this population were young, medium sized dogs and suffered blunt trauma subsequent to vehicular trauma.17 The most commonly traumatized area was the chest followed by the abdomen. A large proportion of population (72.3% suffered multiple injuries with the chest and abdomen being the most common concurrently traumatized areas. As of October 2015, the K9 Officer Down Memorial Page (K9 ODMP) (http:/www.odmp.org/k9) has reported 26 Line of Duty OpK9 deaths for 2015. The causes of K9 deaths listed were classified into: Animal related: 2; Automobile accident: 1; Drowned: 1; Fire: 2; Gunfire: 4; Heat exhaustion: 11; Poisoned: 1; Stabbed 1; Struck by vehicle: 2; and Training accident: 1. These are just a few of the OpK9 deaths that have been reported on the K9 ODMP; no doubt, there are more OpK9 deaths that have not been made public. Per the K9 ODMP website, heat related injuries contribute to the greatest cause of deaths in OpK9s; this prevalence coincides with the personal experience of many of those that routinely work with and support the OpK9 population. Many of these heat related deaths were non duty related, but rather were subsequent to OpK9s being left unattended in patrol vehicles in which the air conditioning unit shut off or was not even running and or the electronic heat monitoring alarm failed to properly work. Stojsih et al18 extracted data from two working dog and law enforcement officer memorial websites evaluating the causes of death of civilian law enforcement dogs from 2002 to 2012. Their analyses revealed 36.7% (318/867) of reported OpK9s deaths were categorized as traumatic in nature with the three leading reported causes of traumatic OpK9 deaths being:
Journal of veterinary emergency and critical care