What Is A Polytrauma?

Polytrauma occurs when a person experiences injuries to multiple body parts and organ systems. Polytrauma (multitrauma) is a short verbal equivalent used for severely injured patients usually with associated injury (i.e. two or more severe injuries in at least two areas of the body), less often with a multiple injury (i.e. two or more severe injuries in one body area). In the civilian realm these are often caused by Motor Vehicle Accidents.

TBI frequently occurs in polytrauma in combination with other disabling conditions, such as amputation, burns, spinal cord injury, auditory and visual damage , spinal cord injury (SCI), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other medical conditions. Due to the severity and complexity of their injuries, Veterans and Service Members with polytrauma require a high level of integration and coordination of clinical care and other support services

Women represent such small numbers in the general Polytrauma patient cohort, their experience is not wholly represented in the published outcomes that inform data‐driven decisions regarding treatment, management and care of the Polytrauma population

The term “polytraumatism” used in practice is not exactly a synonym of polytrauma, however, it has a direct generalizing relation to it. Polytraumatism embraces the broad health care and general societal problem area relating to severe associated and multiple injuries (i.e. to polytrauma). The author presents the actual classification of polytraumas according to their severity into four, three or two groups. This classification is based on the principles of general quantification of the severity of the injury (from the viewpoint of individual injuries and at the same time from the viewpoint of all concurrent injuries) divided into five or six grades.