Cable special stakes out ER in LV

Art Nadler

Thursday, Sept. 25, 1997 | 9:20 a.m.

Behind its undisputed reputation as a gambling mecca and showcase for world-class entertainment, Las Vegas also shines for having one of the finest trauma hospitals in the world.

That's why The Learning Channel (TLC) selected University Medical Center's Trauma Unit for two segments in its upcoming 13-part series "Trauma: Life in the E.R."

The Las Vegas "A Roll of the Dice" segment airs Tuesday, and next Saturday and Sunday on The Learning Channel.

The documentary features a month-long look into the lives of doctors, nurses and patients brought together under life-threatening circumstances.

Viewers are taken behind the scenes when vehicular accident and recreational victims are wheeled into the emergency room clinging to life.

"I thought the city was fascinating," says producer Rick O'Regan. "It was surprising to me to see how these doctors and nurses put so much of themselves into their work.

"What surprised me was how many people who came into that trauma center had really done something stupid. They got drunk and didn't buckle their seat belt. If people buckled their seat belt, trauma centers would go out of business."

TLC photographers, in one incident, track a family of eight whose van was totaled by a semi-truck. The father, unscathed, helplessly watches as trauma surgeons and nurses reconstruct his son's face. In an adjoining room, his daughter is fighting for life, her leg badly smashed.

In another segment, microneurosurgeon John Anson operates on a motorcycle accident victim who sustained severe head injuries. Unable to stop the man's brain from swelling, the frustrated surgeon stands by helpless.

Later, Anson is faced with the grim task of informing the man's wife of his death.

"Most of the E.R. shows on television show blood and guts and don't show the people," Dr. Hugh Follmer, a general surgeon, says. "They got interested in the people involved here -- the doctors and nurses and what happens to families. They showed what their reaction is to all that goes on."

O'Regan admits he expected to see a lot of action and tension. He was impressed with the quiet moments, the doctors and nurses talking about their patients and how good they were at their jobs.

"Seeing young people die is the hardest part," Anson says of working the trauma unit. "The first hour (after an accident) is the golden hour. You need to establish (a patient's) airway, stop bleeding and resuscitate circulation.

"If you can do this in the first hour, a person will usually survive."

Most people who end up in a trauma unit have taken some sort of risk, O'Regan says. Like Las Vegas, they gamble and sometimes lose.

The ones who learn from their mistakes, he says, survive and the ones who don't usually end up in the hospital again.

Dr. H. Scott Bjerke, a trauma surgeon, is shown operating on a man who crashed his dune buggy. He broke his back and injured his spinal cord. At one point, it was questionable whether he would walk again.

The man did recover and was able to walk with a brace. Bjerke was later surprised to see him riding a dirt bike.

"That kind of risk-taking behavior will get him back here," Bjerke predicts. "Fifty percent of the people we see shouldn't be here. They are risk-takers -- weekend warriors.

"Trauma is the biggest killer of people under age 44. It kills more than cardiovascular disease or drugs. Certain kinds of people learn from this disease (trauma injuries), and their life will get better. Others never learn."

What trauma nurse Ginny Landry hopes people will learn from watching "A Roll of the Dice" is that trauma medicine is a team effort. It starts with the paramedics at the accident scene, continues as they call in vital signs to waiting ER doctors and nurses and continues as the trauma unit takes charge in the hospital.

"We have one nurse with every patient and almost one doctor with each patient, too," Follmer says of how UMC's trauma team operates.

"This show will be useful because at some point in our lives, all of us will have to go to the hospital," O'Regan says. "A lot of people find ERs to be scary places, but after you spend an hour watching this on television, you will see that it's not so frightening."

The Learning Channel will air a second segment on UMC's trauma unit on Nov. 25, 29 and 30 called "Boomtown." O'Regan says it will deal with how trauma doctors and patients' lives were changed in Las Vegas -- one of the fastest growing cities in the nation.