The city Fire Department helicopter that crashed Monday, killing 11-year-old Norma Vides-Anaya and three rescue workers, was part of a countywide emergency system that requires critically injured children in the San Fernando, east San Gabriel and Antelope valleys to be taken by helicopter to distant trauma centers.
With a limited number of such facilities capable of caring for children, the sprawling system relies on speed and the skill of helicopter pilots to deliver young patients to one of nine pediatric trauma centers.
For the Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday March 26, 1998 Home Edition Metro Part B Page 3 Metro Desk 1 inches; 28 words Type of Material: Correction
Trauma centers--An article in Wednesday's Times misstated the number of people cared for in 1997 at the 13 trauma centers in Los Angeles County. An estimated 14,000 people were treated at the centers.
Pediatric trauma centers use special medical equipment, including custom-designed instruments to measure blood pressure and smaller-gauge needles.
The system has been sharply reduced in size. Escalating emergency care costs combined with fewer numbers of insured residents has prompted the closure of 11 trauma centers in Los Angeles County since 1985.
"If we had a pediatric trauma center in the San Fernando Valley, that would mitigate the need for most of those air ambulance runs," said Dr. Marc Eckstein, medical director for the city fire department.
Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alarcon said it is "distressing" the Valley has no children's trauma center, and called Tuesday for a city study.
Opinion in the medical community is divided over whether the current trauma care system is adequate.
Alan Heilpren, an emergency room physician and president of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn., said the county system works well. He said the concentration of trauma centers at a handful of hospitals allows for physicians to become expert in the treatment of devastating injuries.
"There is absolutely not enough pediatric trauma to support pediatric critical care centers at every hospital," he said. "If I'm a pediatric surgeon on staff at a hospital that rarely sees pediatric trauma, I'm not going to be very good."
But his immediate predecessor at the association, emergency room physician Brian Johnston, said surviving an accident may depend on proximity to the nearest trauma center.
"The care that the little girl who was hurt was receiving was necessary and appropriate," said Johnston of the rescue crew's decision to fly Vides-Anaya from Sun Valley to Childrens Hospital in Hollywood. "But she had to go there because there was no place locally that could treat her. There was no place locally because we aren't willing to pay for it."
