KILLEEN, Texas — Killeen Fire EMS will now carry whole blood on its ambulances, allowing specially trained paramedics to provide blood transfusions to patients before they arrive at a trauma center.
The department is the first fire-based EMS agency between Dallas and San Antonio to provide prehospital blood transfusions, according to KCEN.
“This blood allows us to buy you more time and to increase your likelihood of survival,” Killeen Fire EMS Medical Director Dr. Chris Colvin told KCEN.
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The treatment is intended for patients experiencing severe blood loss from traumatic injuries, including vehicle crashes and gunshot wounds, as well as other medical emergencies involving significant blood loss.
“When people are losing blood, they need to get to a trauma facility very quickly, but to bridge that care and improve their ability to survive, they need blood,” Colvin said.
Whole blood gives paramedics another option beyond the IV fluids that have long been used during resuscitation, Colvin said. Unlike IV fluids, whole blood restores blood components lost during hemorrhage, including red blood cells, platelets and clotting proteins. Those components support oxygen delivery and clot formation while a patient is being transported for definitive care.
Colvin said patients who lose approximately half their blood volume have about a 50% chance of survival. But when patients receive whole blood before reaching the hospital, the mortality rate drops to about 25%.
“It’s a huge lifesaver,” Colvin said.
The program operates through a partnership with Baylor Scott & White, which supplies and rotates the blood units.
Each unit is stored in a temperature-controlled cooler aboard an ambulance. The department continuously monitors the temperature with a smartphone app that provides real-time information.
“We’re keeping it refrigerated. We’re monitoring it continuously. I have an app on my phone that lets me know, in real time, what the temperature of that icebox is,” Colvin said.
If a unit is not used within about 10 days, Killeen Fire EMS returns it to Baylor Scott & White so it can be used in the hospital before it expires. The department then receives a replacement unit.
As Central Texas grows, department leaders hope to expand the whole blood program to additional units.
“We are saving lives every day,” Colvin said. “I’m very happy, thankful and humbled to be a part of that process.”
