Trauma

Clinical and Biological Aspects

Late in summer 1973, the Bell Museum of Pathology of the University of Minnesota Medical School, held a three day symposium to discuss some of the biological aspects of trauma disease. The meeting was intended to be a coatribution to the study of trauma by placing emphasis upon many of the basic biologic issues related to trauma injuries. It was also hoped to put in focus perspectives from which constructive interaction between basic research scientists and practicing clinicians could flow. It is our belief that it is through such interdisciplinary exchanges that intelligent progress and new developments will occur. Moreover we believe that the student body and the practicing physician can equally share this scientific backdrop, and in a sense must so participate, for in a technological society trauma injuries face the prospect of an almost exponential increase in numbers, decade to decade. With these views in mind we brought together biologists, biophysicists, biochemists, pathologists, physicians and surgeons, in an effort to build a new bridge of collaborative understanding between unrelated disciplines, which, in the past, have charac­ teristically rarely inter-related, one to the other. There were no hard and fast rules set in the selection of topics. Not surprisingly, therefore, the program developed into one of diverse and remarkable scope and breadth. Papers for discussion varied from the biochemistry of collagen metabolism to features of trauma characteristic of aviation and air trauma accidents.