A belief that seriously injured patients should receive medical care as soon as possible has been one of the planks of modern medicine. However, doctors are now beginning to question whether medical intervention soon after a major injury is necessarily a good thing. The BBC television series Superhuman, presented by leading fertility expert Lord Robert Winston, examines the notion that the seriously injured body might actually fare better if left to its own devices immediately after an accident. Trauma teams have historically tried to intervene early and reverse many of the changes that our bodies initiate.
Blood pressure drops, so put in fluids.
Injured people tend to cool down, so warm them up. But many of these interventions are now being questioned as trauma doctors increasingly realise that the things the body does to preserve itself after an injury often have a purpose. Nowhere has the body's ability to cope with even the most traumatic of injury been so graphically illustrated as in the theatre of war. During the Vietnam War the use of helicopters allowed injured soldiers to reach medical help within minutes. In many cases, blood or other fluids were given before the injured were even air-lifted out of the battlefield.