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CNN Today

Surviving Your Drive: Feds Rate Car Safety; Loyola Trauma Center Celebrates Miracle of Medicine

Aired August 25, 2000 - 1:04 p.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: On the topic of safety on the road, if you have been watching CNN today, we are devoting much of this day to a series of reports called "Survive Your Drive." Car accidents may be the most preventable cause of injury and death. And in just a moment we'll turn our attention to vehicle safety and state of the art trauma care. A little later we will go live to an airbag safety test. We'll and focus on the special risks faced and posed by teenaged drivers.

CNN's Jeff Flock is spending the day at Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois. And CNN's Ed Garsten is at the General Motors proving grounds in Milford, Michigan. And let's start there with a look what makes some cars safer than others.

Ed, what have you learned?

ED GARSTEN, CNN DETROIT BUREAU CHIEF: Well, Natalie, you know, that's the one thing you can't tell by kicking the tire or looking under the hood or even checking the sticker. But the government does have a rating system that has that information to help you make that very important decision.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GARSTEN (voice-over): The federal government crash tests almost every car and truck sold in the U.S. for frontal impact and side impact, and awards star ratings based on the results. The star ratings, from one to five, offer consumers an indication as to how safe a vehicle may be.

RICHARD MORGAN, NATIONAL HIGHWAY TRAFFIC SAFETY ADMINISTRATION: The safety conscious consumer should purchase a four-star or five-star vehicle, and that tells you that you've got about a 20 percent and below chance of a serious injure to the head or to your chest.

GARSTEN: Among passenger cars, the Chevrolet Impala and Volvo S70 were among the best, along with the Volkswagen Jetta four-door and Ford Focus two-door. Each received five stars for frontal impact and four for side impact. The Ford Windstar and Honda Odyssey were the top scoring mini vans or sport utility vehicles, with five stars for each test. Ford Explorer, and Honda CR-V were close behind. On the low end among passenger cars were the Chevrolet Cavalier two-door, Chrysler Cirrus four-door, Dodge Stratus and Ford Escort. Low scoring SUVs or minivans were the Dodge Durango, Jeep Cherokee, GMC Safari two-by-four, and Chevrolet S10 pickup. A low score, however, doesn't mean the vehicle is unsafe to drive.

MORGAN: Every car that's sold in the United States of America is a safe car, in that it's been tested in the frontal direction and in the side direction.

GARSTEN: But a low rating does tell you something about how well the vehicle would protect you in a crash.

MORGAN: Many of the low star-rated vehicles for frontal impact, the front structure does not crush very well. It quickly builds up to high -- very high forces going through the front structure. These go through the safety belt and are then passed into the human being. For the side impact, its the manufacturers that cannot slow down the interior door, cannot slow down the speed of that interior door coming in. And the manufacturers who have not put crushable material on the inside of the door.

GARSTEN: Car shoppers can find the star rating for any of the vehicles tested on the Web site for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. At www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ncap.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GARSTEN: I'm Ed Garsten, live at GM Proving Grounds in Milford, Michigan, and if you don't have access to the Web, you can always write to the National Highway Traffic Safety administration in Washington for that information.

Well, coming up about 30 minutes from now, we're going to bring you another one of the crash tests we've been bringing you all day from here. This one is going to deal with how engineers are finding ways to minimize injures to small statured people from their airbags. That's all coming up about 30 minutes from now -- Natalie.

ALLEN: All right, Ed Garsten, we'll see you in a bit, Ed.

Well, if you were ever seriously hurt in a car crash, your best bet for survival is a level-one trauma center. One of the best and busiest is Loyola University Medical Center in the Chicago suburb of Maywood.

And our Jeff Flock is there -- Jeff.

JEFF FLOCK, CNN CHICAGO BUREAU CHIEF: Hello, Natalie.

All day long we have been bringing you unique looks at Loyola University Medical Center here in Maywood, Illinois. This picture that is behind me now is pretty much the ER nurse's station, which you may have seen on television in some fashion, but this is what a real one looks like.

I'm joined by the director of emergency medicine here, Dr. Mark Cichon. Thanks, first of all, for letting us come in today. We've had cameras all over your place today, from the outside, in front of the emergency room, to over with the chopper. First of all, what is a level-one trauma center?

DR. MARK CICHON, EMERGENCY ROOM DIRECTOR, LOYOLA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Basically a level-one, we receive, here at Loyola we receive the highest level of trauma. They're identified pre-hospital, in the field as needing immediate intervention.

FLOCK: So you get the worst of the worst?

CICHON: Basically correct, we get the worst of the worst.

FLOCK: I want to just take a look at what this station looks like and give me for what's going on here? what are these folks doing?

CICHON: Basically this is the nurse center in the emergency department. We have the ability to receive the telephone calls here from outside institutions, the ability to contact the physicians we need for support here at the institution, entering data into the computers, entering test requests, receiving test results.

FLOCK: Now you talked about the calls that you get. I want to folks to the radio room here right now. And I know you got a call just before we went on the air. Give me a sense for what's happening in here, who is she talking with right now?

CICHON: She's receiving a call from one of our pre-hospital providers who is seeking medical direction. We have the ability to -- for the outside providers to contact us if they have questions. They have a set of standard operating procedures. However, in the event they need to stray from they will contact us, we can give them direction immediately on the radio.

FLOCK: Obviously, we're being very careful not to allow any of this to go out over our air. We don't what to breach anyone's confidence back in here. So obviously we're keeping quiet. But, this is where the first point of contact comes. This is where you learn what you're getting?

CICHON: Exactly, we'll learn from the pre-hospital what's coming in. If we need to activate our trauma system within the institution and to what level we activate -- react to what's coming in. And then we start congregating all the people in the trauma room and get everything available for the patient prior to their arrival.

FLOCK: OK, I want to now move on to, perhaps the worst case scenario. We want to tell people about a story of young girl who maybe went through some of the worst kind of trauma you can go through, correct?

CICHON: Correct, this is every parent's nightmare. The child was playing on a big wheel and inadvertently one of their neighbors had an accident or did not see the child go behind the car, in a Suburban basically, rolled over the child's chest, not once but twice, and as a result was taken to a local hospital where the physician identified the concern, immediately contacted LIFESTAR and had an expeditious transfer here to Loyola.

FLOCK: Got you, we want to tell their story in a second, but first some good news for our views, and that is in terms of fatality rates. We can report some good news and that is that this past year, the fatality rate, in terms of auto crashes, was at the lowest level per 100 million miles it has been ever in history. From 2.3 fatalities per 100 million miles in 1988, now to 1.6 fatalities per crash. Certainly that's good progress. And part of the reason is that people get to the hospital quicker.

And that is what happened here with this young lady here, who is a very special young lady. She would be anyway, wouldn't she? She's particularly special and she survived such a terrible tragedy. This is her dad. Give me sense of what happened, what you went through.

NICK COSENTINO, JESSICA'S FATHER: Well, Jessica was backed over by our neighbor's Suburban. And she was badly injured. Her chest was run over, crushed her heart and lungs. And she was transported from Central DuPage Hospital to Loyola by helicopter and the speed of that I believe, is the reason why she's here today.

FLOCK: Now you -- she got there in the so-called golden hour that we talked to people about earlier today, within an hour of the crash.

CICHON: Correct, she was there actually in the hospital rather quickly because the paramedics at the scene identified the potential, based on the mechanism of injury that she would deteriorate. She began deteriorating en route. They identified that through the hospital personnel. The physician in the department at the outsigning hospital recognized what he was dealing with, immediately contacted Loyola and we were able to transfer her in a quick fashion.

FLOCK: I want to take our viewers back about three years now, almost to the day, and a picture of Jessica at that time, about three years old, correct? What is that like as a parent to go through that where your child is run over by a car? I mean, it's got to be every parent's worst nightmare.

THERESA COSENTINO, JESSICA'S MOTHER: Definitely your worst nightmare. But when getting here, we were very scared, very nervous. The doctors all the staff here really made us feel positive and to stay strong and positive and they never gave up and we never gave up hope.

FLOCK: How long in the hospital?

T. COSENTINO: Three months.

FLOCK: Wow, what more than anything saved Jessica's life?

CICHON: I think that there were a multitude of things, everything coming together, the combined efforts of multiple physicians, multiple departments, the institution commitment here at Loyola University, as well as a strong family support. I mean, there is so much that's involved in the care of a child and the care of the family as well. And all those things came together.

FLOCK: Doctor, thank you so much, we appreciate it very much. Thank you very much for coming, we appreciate it. Jessica, good to meet you. All righty, an appropriate way to conclude our report this hour on how folks survived the drive happy, a success story, a survival story. We will continue throughout the afternoon.

I'm Jeff Flock, CNN, reporting live from Maywood, Illinois.

ALLEN: All right, Jeff.

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