A consultant with more than two decades of experience, Aubrey W. Gladstone leads Gladstone Consulting, Inc., in Boca Raton, Florida. Aubrey Gladstone holds an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, which recently published an article on in-flight medical care based on a trial conducted by the university's researchers.
From 2014 to 2017, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine led a national clinical trial that studied the potential benefits of administering two units of blood plasma to accident patients with severe bleeding on helicopter flights to the hospital. A natural component of blood, plasma helps blood clot after an injury.
Ultimately, the phase 3 trial consisted of 501 patients who were taken to nine trauma centers. The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that 76.8 percent of plasma patients were still alive 30 days after treatment.
This figure is salient, given that only 67 percent of patients who had received standard care were alive 30 days after treatment. Researchers concluded that plasma may increase the chance of survival by nearly 10 percent after traumatic injuries that put patients at risk of hemorrhagic shock.
