Lecture
The golden hour is a term used in critical care medicine to describe a period of time (considered to be close in duration to 1 hour) after an injury occurs, during which first aid can be given most effectively. It is believed that during this time the likelihood that treatment will prevent the patient's death is at its highest.
During the golden hour, medical professionals strive to provide first aid as quickly and effectively as possible, stabilize the patient's condition, and ensure transport to a specialized medical facility (for example, a trauma hospital or a center for severe injuries) for more qualified medical care.
The importance of the golden hour lies in the fact that early and competent intervention can increase the chances of survival and reduce possible complications for the victim. The faster medical care is provided, the greater the victim's chances of successful recovery. That is why time is a critical factor in the treatment of severe injuries and conditions, and the golden hour plays an important role in saving patients' lives.
When a victim sustains a severe injury, especially with internal bleeding, urgent surgical intervention is required to prevent shock and other complications. In this regard, the question of promptly transporting victims to a medical facility, or providing them with first aid at the scene of the injury, is of paramount importance. Since some injuries cause a rapid deterioration in the patient's condition, the time between sustaining the injury and receiving medical care should ideally be kept to a minimum.
The origin of this term is presumably attributed to the records of French army military surgeons during the First World War . The introduction of the term into professional vocabulary is credited to trauma surgeon R. Adams Cowley , who first became known as a military surgeon and later as head of the trauma department of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore . This institution cites the following quote from its founder on its website:
Between life and death there is a golden hour. If you are severely injured, you have less than 60 minutes to survive. Of course, you will not necessarily die exactly one hour later — it may happen three days or two weeks later — but during that period something irreversible will already have happened in your body.
— R. Adams Cowley
Although the professional medical community generally agrees that delaying help to a victim is highly undesirable, contemporary peer-reviewed medical literature questions the existence of the "golden hour" as a concept without a solid scientific basis. In particular, Dr. Bryan Bledsoe, criticizing this concept alongside several other terms he called "myths of emergency medical services," showed that peer-reviewed literature demonstrates no "magic time" for saving critical patients .
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