Prehospital blood transfusion programs: Capabilities and lessons learned

The Trauma and Hemostasis Oxygenation Research (THOR) network has met in Bergen, Norway every summer over the past six years in an effort to have experts in transfusion, blood banking, military medicine, and trauma surgery exchange ideas, share their experiences, and set an agenda to move the science of remote damage control resuscitation forward. In this manuscript, we supply the lessons shared from the authors/speakers to the reader. These lessons include the experiences of the Norwegian Military with freeze dried plasma and whole blood resuscitation, lessons from extreme remote damage control resuscitation situations on oceanic cruises, and remote blood product resuscitation techniques at Mayo Clinic and the University of Pittsburgh.