Wikipedia:Peer review/Trauma (medicine)/archive2

Trauma (medicine)[edit]

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This peer review discussion has been closed.
I intend on getting this article up to GA status and I have addressed many of the concerns outlined in the GA review, but before I move forward with trying to promote the article I want to look for other ways of improvement. Thanks, Peter.C • talk • contribs 01:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Review by Churn and Change:

The lead should be a summary of the article and should not introduce new information not explained elsewhere. The definition of 'trauma', its Greek root, and so on belong in the body text. See WP:lead. That section does not need citations; it is preferable not to have any, though in high-edit-traffic articles that may be a problem.
Wikipedia expects secondary sources which note, review or summarize primary research. This helps both with ensuring the noted material is mainstream and established in the field (primary research may or may not be, and it can always be cherry picked to push a point of view), and also allows editors to understand and comment on it (WP is not edited by experts). See WP:SCHOLARSHIP. Here are examples of primary sources in the article: "Contrast-induced nephropathy in elderly trauma patients," "Computed tomographic scanning without oral contrast solution for blunt bowel and mesenteric injuries in abdominal trauma," (this needs a doi by the way), "Over Reliance on Computed Tomography Imaging in Patients With Severe Abdominal Injury: Is the Delay Worth the Risk?" Please try to find review articles, summaries or textbooks as sources. Any article with original research—a new study, meta study, math or way of calculating—is a primary source. If the source is technical and not comprehensible to the lay person, that is a double strike. If the source has not been cited much in the literature, it should not be used.
"Classification": Some have percentage numbers and others don't. The numbers which do exist add up to more than 100%. Considering that polytrauma is a category of its own, this needs explanation. Also trauma, obviously, has been classified in many other ways as well: war-related trauma in some reports, famine-related trauma in some UN reports, and so on. What exactly is being attempted in this section? The common classifications?
"Causes": This section seems a mix of further classification of trauma, some primary causes (falls, penetration by projectiles etc), some secondary causes (violence, abuse, traffic collision) and some tertiary causes (alchohol, benzos). For scope this vast, the section is inadequate. It is also unclear which sections apply only to the US.
"Pathophysiology" Since WP is not a medical encyclopedia, simpler language needed for the section heading. "Body physical response to trauma" seems adequate. Highly technical: gluconeogenesis and lipolysis are true jargon. Making new glucose and using up fat is simpler and accurate language.
There seems to be unnecessarily complicated wording. A "thoracostomy tube" is the same as a "chest tube"; "cardicotocography" is "electronic fetal monitoring"; "exsanguination" is bleeding (ex=out, sanguine=bloody). At other places, common words are incorrectly used: "illicit drugs" is a broad category, and should not link to an article on "recreational drugs" which has coffee within its scope; "social and economic costs" should not link to the technical word "social costs" as used in economic theory; sex to denote the "male/female" distinction should not link to the "act of sexual reproduction";
Overall, most of the article is incomprehensible to the lay person with its "mentation," "hemodynamic instability," "thermal trauma," "deteriorating perfusion of tissues" and so on. At other places it is trivial: "A missed injury is one which is not found during the initial assessment, such as when a patient is brought into a hospital's emergency department, but manifests itself at a later point in time." (what else could it possibly be?) and "The care of acutely injured people is a public health system is an issue which involves bystanders, community members, health care professionals, and health care systems." At stil other places, the statements are leaps of faith: "An important part of managing trauma in children is weight estimation." The link hits the reader out of the blue and is not explained further anywhere.