Traumatic injury is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Despite many advances in care, death from hemorrhage remains a primary cause of early, preventable deaths from injury. Disordered coagulation in the setting of injury and shock, termed trauma-induced coagulopathy, is seen in 25% of these hemorrhaging patients.
Multiple mediators and mechanisms have been targeted to improve outcomes from trauma-induced coagulopathy, but the cellular contributors remain understudied. These cellular contributors include platelets and endothelium, and are the focus of the basic and translational trauma research laboratory at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital led by Lucy Kornblith, M.D.
Dr. Kornblith is a surgeon scientist focused on elucidating the mechanisms and mediators of trauma-induced coagulopathy to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to improve the care of critically injured patients. She has expertise in the study of post-injury platelet biology, functional laboratory measures of coagulation, and in nuances of biospecimen collection in large cohorts of severely injured patients.