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Trauma, a Neglected Global Disease: A Call for Papers on Prevention, Management and the Acute Response to Injury

Update: the submission deadline for the Special Issue on Trauma has been extended to February 3rd.

PLOS Medicine, the leading open access medical journal, publishes themed issues regularly to highlight and encourage progress in key areas of clinical research. As part of this program, the journal is now inviting submissions of research papers to be considered for publication in a special issue devoted to trauma science which is planned for publication in Summer 2017.

We are delighted that two leaders in the field, Prof. Karim Brohi (Centre for Trauma Sciences, Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom) and Dr. Martin Schreiber (Division of Trauma, Critical Care, and Acute Care Surgery, Department of Surgery, Oregon Health and Science University, United States), have agreed to join us as guest editors for this issue, which in addition to original research articles will include commissioned Editorials and Perspectives on key topics in the area.

Traumatic injury has long been recognized as a neglected disease of extremely high burden. Although the nature of traumatic injury and need for swift care pose challenges to research during the immediate response to trauma, high-quality scientific research and clinical evidence in these early phases have the potential to mitigate long term disability and prevent deaths. Epidemiologic and public health research have  great potential to identify and test interventions that may prevent avoidable injury. Given the substantial and diverse genomic response to severe trauma and burn injury that occur within hours of injury, large-scale cohort studies are increasingly applying genetic and experimental techniques, which have been the mainstay of other areas of health research, to provide mechanistic insight into the body’s response to trauma and to identify potential targeted therapies. At the same time high quality data generated from very large international collaborations, such as the CRASH-2 and ongoing CRASH-3 studies, are providing direct insights into the care and management of severely injured patients.  

As part of the PLOS Medicine Special Issue on Trauma we especially welcome submission of high quality research studies in the following areas:

  • Trauma Prevention: Studies on the causes of and risk factors for traumatic injury, including falls, firearms and traffic collision, that could lead to prevention of the major contributors to morbidity and mortality.
  • Trauma and Critical Care: Diagnosis, treatment and management of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis, multiple organ failure or thromboembolic disease following traumatic injury.
  • Management of Bleeding and Coagulation: Studies on the management of severe blood loss, transfusion of red blood cells and other blood products, and trauma-induced coagulopathy (TIC).
  • Neurotrauma: Studies on traumatic brain injury (TBI) and spinal cord injury (SCI), including those on interventions in the immediate post-injury phase aimed at mitigating the short- and long-term impact of neurotrauma.
  • Inflammation and Immune Dysfunction: Insight into the early inflammatory and immune response to trauma that can lead to complications such as multiple organ failure.

Researchers who would like their work to be considered for this special issue should submit by Friday January 27th 2017. Authors of submissions not selected for the issue may be offered transfer of their paper to PLOS ONE, before or after peer review, with the prospect of inclusion in a Trauma Collection, which will include papers published in both journals. Please submit your manuscript at this site: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/s/submit-now.

Authors are not required to send a pre-submission inquiry when submitting a manuscript for this special issue. Please indicate in your cover letter that you would like the full manuscript to be considered for the special issue. If you would like to inquire about the suitability of a manuscript for consideration, please email the editors via plosmedicine@plos.org.

 

Featured image credit: U.S. Navy photo by Journalist 2nd Class Shane Tuck, Public Domain

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