The term “golden hour” is a well-known lexicon among trauma surgeons and emergency
medical service (EMS) providers who care for injured patients on a daily basis. The
underlying tenet of this adage suggests an injured patient has 60 min from time of injury to receive definitive care, after which morbidity and mortality
significantly increase. Teleologically, this seems to make great sense, as no one
would argue an injured individual should be left bleeding on the streets for an extended
period of time. Nevertheless, like many holy shrines in medicine once exposed to the
light of evidenced-based review, one finds the literature does not necessarily support
our biases.
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 13, 2014
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© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
