Limb injuries are commonplace and range from minor sprains to traumatic amputations. Pre-hospital care practitioners should be prepared to treat the entire range of limb injuries whilst maintaining appropriate overall clinical priority.

Primary survey

The ABCDE approach (see Chapter 21) should always be adopted as initial management. The exception to this is massive external haemorrhage where time spent performing assessment of airway and breathing would put the patient at risk of death from exsanguination. In this case, stop the haemorrhage first by progressing up the haemostatic ladder (see Chapter 11) and then transfer the patient urgently to the nearest trauma centre with an appropriate pre-alert message.

Secondary survey

Wound care