Rethinking Traumatic Injury at the Cellular Level
Jason Sperry
When a human body suffers a traumatic injury, whether in a car accident or on a battlefield, time is precious. Techniques that can speed the emergency response or slow the body’s reaction are invaluable.
Since 2016, Jason Sperry, Andrew B. Peitzman Professor of Surgery and professor in the Department of Critical Care Medicine, has led a U.S. Department of Defense project to create a nationwide network of trauma systems and centers, conducting detailed research to improve military trauma care in collaboration with Frank Guyette, professor of emergency medicine, and Stephen Wisniewski, professor of epidemiology.
Sperry was the clinical lead and co-author on a 2021 Journal of the American Medical Association paper that made an unprecedented advance in understanding the body’s response to trauma at the cellular level, which led them to apply techniques used in treating cancer—infusions of thawed blood plasma—that had never been applied to the treatment of trauma.
Along with lead author Timothy Billiar, Distinguished Professor of Surgery and executive vice president of UPMC, the team discovered that human traumatic injury response could be classified into two endotypes, or sub-types, one of which benefitted from infusions of thawed plasma after suffering traumatic brain injury.
Sperry and Guyette have shown that thawed blood plasma administered before the patient gets to the hospital can greatly increase the odds of survival. A clinical trial showed that trauma patients at risk of hemorrhagic shock who received two units of blood plasma while being transported by air were 10% more likely to survive.
“The 10% reduction in mortality borders on unprecedented,” says Sperry. “We have never seen such a big impact from such a small intervention. The benefits are extraordinary and practice changing.”