Surgery & Trauma Clinical Guidelines
The surgery and trauma guideline index: ATLS 11, ACS trauma standards, TQP and EAST guidelines, WSES, severe TBI, SSI prevention, intra-abdominal infection.
Surgery & Trauma
The surgery and trauma department hub, indexing the governing guidelines: ATLS 11, ACS trauma standards, TQP, EAST, WSES, severe TBI, SSI prevention, and ERAS.
Surgery and trauma is the discipline of operative care and injury care: the initial assessment and resuscitation of the injured patient, control of hemorrhage, the trauma system and trauma center that receive that patient, operative and non-operative management of surgical disease including abdominal emergencies and traumatic brain injury, and the perioperative practices that prevent surgical site infection and speed recovery. Its practitioners are general and trauma surgeons and the anesthesia, nursing, and critical care teams that work with them, and their guidelines come from a small number of bodies, chiefly the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma, the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, the World Society of Emergency Surgery, and the Surgical Infection Society.
This section is new. It currently indexes the governing professional-society guidelines for surgery and trauma, each with its publisher, current edition, scope, and a verified source. Multi-part syntheses in the format used by the Critical Care and Emergency Medicine departments are being written for this department and will be linked from this page as they publish.
Governing guidelines
| Guideline | Publisher | Edition | Scope | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) | ACS Committee on Trauma | 11th edition (2025) | Initial assessment and management of the injured patient; the 11th edition reorders the primary survey to xABCDE, placing control of exsanguinating hemorrhage before airway | ACS |
| Resources for Optimal Care of the Injured Patient | ACS Committee on Trauma | 2022 Standards (7th edition) | The personnel, resources, policies, and practices required for ACS trauma center verification; 110 standards | ACS |
| Trauma Quality Programs (TQP) Best Practices Guidelines | ACS Committee on Trauma | Rolling series | Topic-specific management guidelines for trauma care providers, including geriatric trauma, massive transfusion, traumatic brain injury, orthopedic trauma, and genitourinary injury | ACS |
| Practice Management Guidelines | EAST | Rolling library (GRADE methodology) | Evidence-based guidelines in trauma and acute care surgery, including recent guidelines on renal trauma, the open abdomen, rib fractures in older adults, and REBOA | EAST |
| Diagnosis and Treatment of Acute Appendicitis: 2020 Update of the WSES Jerusalem Guidelines | WSES | 2020 | Diagnosis, non-operative management of uncomplicated appendicitis, timing of appendectomy, surgical technique, intra-operative grading, perforated appendicitis with phlegmon or abscess, and perioperative antibiotics | World Journal of Emergency Surgery |
| Guidelines for the Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury | Brain Trauma Foundation | 4th edition (2016; decompressive craniectomy update 2020) | Recommendations across 18 monitoring and treatment topics for severe TBI, including surgical procedures, intracranial pressure monitoring, management of brain swelling, and nutrition | Brain Trauma Foundation |
| Clinical Practice Guidelines for Antimicrobial Prophylaxis in Surgery | ASHP / IDSA / SIS / SHEA | 2013 | A standardized approach to antimicrobial agent selection, timing, and duration for prevention of surgical site infection, by procedure | AJHP |
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Guideline for the Prevention of Surgical Site Infection | CDC / HICPAC | 2017 | Parenteral and non-parenteral antimicrobial prophylaxis, glycemic control, normothermia, oxygenation, and antiseptic prophylaxis for SSI prevention | JAMA Surgery |
| The Surgical Infection Society Guidelines on the Management of Intra-Abdominal Infection | SIS | 2024 update | Risk assessment, source control, and the timing, selection, and duration of antimicrobial therapy for intra-abdominal infection, updating the 2017 revised guidelines | PubMed |
| Guidelines for Perioperative Care in Elective Colorectal Surgery: ERAS Society Recommendations 2025 | ERAS Society | 2025 | Graded recommendations for each element of the enhanced recovery pathway in elective colorectal surgery, including preoperative optimization and postoperative mobilization | Surgery |
| WHO Surgical Safety Checklist and Guidelines for Safe Surgery | WHO | 2009 | Ten objectives for safe surgery and the 19-item checklist applied before anesthesia induction, before skin incision, and before the patient leaves the operating room | NCBI Bookshelf |
| STOP THE BLEED | ACS Committee on Trauma | Current course (revised 2025) | Public bleeding control training in three actions: pressure, packing, and tourniquet application | ACS Stop the Bleed |
How this section is used
For protocol development, start from the source list above. Each row names the publisher and the current edition so that a trauma program or surgical quality committee can confirm it is working from the governing document rather than a secondary summary, and the scope column separates the course (ATLS), the verification standards (Resources for Optimal Care), and the topic guidelines (TQP, EAST, WSES) that share a publisher.
For point-of-care questions, Lumen retrieves from this corpus and cites the page it drew from. See how a trauma service runs these guidelines as one shared Lumen workspace.
Related departments
- Emergency Medicine: the trauma bay, where ATLS primary survey, hemorrhage control, and massive transfusion begin
- Critical Care: the surgical and trauma ICU, transfusion practice, VTE prophylaxis, and post-injury organ support
- Vascular Access: large-bore and central access for resuscitation, arterial lines, and the infection prevention that follows
- Infection Prevention: surgical site infection surveillance, skin antisepsis, and the hand hygiene and precautions policies that apply in the operating room
- Oncology: surgical oncology and the perioperative management of the cancer patient
- Perioperative and Anesthesia: the anesthesia, ERAS, and preoperative evaluation half of every operation
- Neurology and Stroke: severe traumatic brain injury and intracranial pressure management shared with neurocritical care
- Clinical Pharmacy: surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis selection and timing, and the pharmacy role in massive transfusion adjuncts
- Hospital Medicine: medical comanagement of surgical and trauma inpatients
- Pediatrics and Neonatal: pediatric trauma and pediatric appendicitis under the WSES and SIS guidelines
- Obstetrics and Maternal Care: trauma in pregnancy and obstetric hemorrhage control
Frequently asked questions
What does the surgery and trauma section of The Clinical Database cover?
Surgery and trauma is the discipline of operative and injury care: initial trauma assessment and resuscitation, hemorrhage control, the trauma system that receives the injured patient, operative and non-operative management of surgical disease, and the perioperative prevention of infection and complications. This section indexes the professional-society guidelines that govern that care: ATLS 11, the ACS trauma center standards, the ACS TQP best practices guidelines, the EAST practice management guidelines, the WSES Jerusalem guidelines on appendicitis, the Brain Trauma Foundation severe TBI guidelines, the ASHP/IDSA/SIS/SHEA surgical antimicrobial prophylaxis guideline, the CDC surgical site infection guideline, the SIS intra-abdominal infection guideline, the ERAS colorectal guideline, the WHO Surgical Safety Checklist, and the ACS Stop the Bleed program.
Is this section complete?
No. The section is new. It currently carries the governing guideline index with a verified source for each row. Multi-part syntheses in the format used by the ICU and Emergency Medicine departments are being written and will be linked from this page as each one publishes.
What is the difference between ATLS, the ACS trauma center standards, and the TQP best practices guidelines?
They are three different kinds of document from the same body, the American College of Surgeons Committee on Trauma. ATLS is the course and manual for initial assessment and management of the injured patient. Resources for Optimal Care of the Injured Patient sets the personnel, resource, and process standards a hospital must meet for trauma center verification. The Trauma Quality Programs best practices guidelines are topic-specific management guidelines, such as traumatic brain injury and massive transfusion, written for trauma care providers.
Does this page give doses, thresholds, or treatment algorithms?
No. Recommendation-level content, including transfusion ratios, prophylaxis dosing, and intracranial pressure thresholds, belongs to the reviewed syntheses, which cite the source for every statement. This page identifies the governing guideline, its publisher, its current edition, and where to read it.
Are these guidelines a substitute for institutional protocols?
No. They are the published professional-society recommendations that institutional protocols are built from. EAST states this explicitly for its own guidelines. Local protocols and medical direction govern actual care.