A motorway accident victim says she owes her husband’s life to the existence of the Major Trauma Centre (MTC) at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) after they both suffered multiple injuries in the same horrific incident.

Louise French and her husband Kevin found themselves being treated alongside each other in the hospital’s Intensive Care Unit following the devastating crash on the M5 motorway in October 2012.

Community nurse Louise suffered breaks to her neck, pelvis, left leg and foot, but her husband, who works as a finance director, was left with a severe head injury, punctures to both lungs, two broken legs, plus other fractures, after taking the brunt of the impact.

The couple, both aged 47, were helping to change a flat tyre on the hard shoulder of the M5, between junctions 3 and 4, when they were hit by a car.

Louise, from Telford, Shropshire, is convinced her husband of 22 years would not be alive today if not for the expert emergency care available at QEHB - which became a Major Trauma Centre on 26 March 2012 last year. She said: “I have no doubts in my mind that he wouldn’t have survived without the immediate urgent surgery to his head and lungs that he received. He wouldn’t be here today if there wasn’t a Major Trauma Centre close to where the accident happened.

“I think if the accident had happened in Telford, where we live, and we had to wait for an air ambulance to take us to hospital, I don’t think my husband would be alive now. It’s only because the accident happened so close to the QE that he was saved.”

Mr French spent 16 days in a coma and is still undergoing rehabilitation for his injuries. Mrs French remained in hospital for nearly seven weeks following the accident, which happened between the A456 Birmingham and A38 Bromsgrove turn-offs.

Within the first year since it went live as an MTC, more than 1,000 of the region’s most severely injured casualties passed through the front doors of QEHB.

The hospital’s specialist teams have treated the most complex injuries suffered by victims, including massive internal bleeding, brain injuries, multiple fractures and cardiac failure.

In total, between 26 March 2012 and March 2013, a total of 1,073 patients arrived at the hospital due to its Major Trauma Centre status. These were patients who triggered the West Midlands Ambulance Service MTC criteria and accounted for 80% of all the region’s major trauma casualties.

Some 40% of these patients arrived in the Emergency Department following road traffic accidents.

In the first year of the MTC, 80 – 90% of major trauma patients arrived by land ambulance and 10 – 20% by air ambulance. On average, their length of stay in the hospital was 16 days.

Some 50% of major trauma patients who are admitted will go straight to a ward, about 10% will go to directly to theatres, and a further 20% will go to Critical Care. About 20% will go home.

Mondays and Tuesdays see the largest number of patients arriving, between 08:00 and 17:00. Conversely, there has been an increase in overnight activity (20:00 – 08:00) at weekends, particularly on Friday and Saturday nights.

Professor Sir Keith Porter, the UK’s only Professor of Traumatology and MTC Clinical Lead said: “No department within the hospital associated with the care of a trauma patient will have escaped the impact of the MTC status. 

“What is clear is that the hard work, inter-specialty and department support has made its function so successful. It is relatively early days and the system is very much a system in evolution but we know it is already making a real difference to people’s lives.”