Thousands of Americans die of trauma every year because they are too far from hospitals

More people have been diagnosed with cancer in the United States, where they have been trauma centers for many of their accidents occurred, new research shows.

Trauma is the leading cause of death for Americans under 45, killing 214,000 people a year.

Not all states are prepared for this study, however, and they are more likely to be more effective, under-served swaths of the US, and new Brigham and Women's Hospital research reveals.

New rural areas like Wyoming, Mississippi and West Virginia.

Poor access to trauma centers costs 7,600 lives that could be saved if trauma victims in rural areas

The primary injuries in a car accident or a serious fall or other trauma, even when severe, are often treatable in a hospital setting.

But the window of opportunity to save their lives is brief.

Doctors refer to the first 45 minutes after a traumatic injury as the 'golden hour.'

During that period, the patient's body mass and adrenaline pains, protecting their organs from shock and eventual failure.

It's crucial that she or he gets treatment during that window. After the 45th minute, survival rates plummet.

And that's where rent becomes key. The furhter from a hospital you sustain an injury the longer it takes to get this treatment.

In the US, an average of eight crucial minutes tick by a call for help and the arrival of an ambulance.

But that time stretches to 14 minutes – a third of the 'golden hour' – in rural areas.

And 10 percent of patients waited, helpless and dying for 30 minutes, according to a 2017 Reuters report.

More, even once an ambulance arrives, it may not be able to assess and treat a patient's injuries – and the nearest hospital might not be.

What a patient needs in these moments is a trauma center.

As of 2002, there were 1,154 trauma centers – including all of these levels – in the 3.8 million square miles of the US.

And according to the latest research, headed by Zain Hashmi of Brigham and Women's, distance makes all the difference.

1.95 million trauma deaths in the US between 1996 and 2016.

They compared that information to Level I and Level II trauma centers in the state, and determined how likely it was that they had access to a trauma center within the golden hour.

Over half of US states had poor access to trauma centers. These included Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

Overarchingly, 49 percent of all 1.95 million deaths occurred before the hospital, with fewer (42 percent) happening at the hospital.

And they determined that the pre-hospitalization of the poor had the poorest access to trauma centers.

Inmates with higher percentages of deaths en route to hospitals, just 63.2 percent of patients were diagnosed with trauma centers within the golden hour.

By comparison, in the other states, 90.2 percent of patients could be transported to hospitals.

The searchers should be able to prevent this.

In fact, about 7,600 deaths occurred each year, depending on their calculations.

"We know more about trauma center saves lives, but we do not know about the regional differences in trauma center access," said Dr. Hashmi.

Overall, hospitals have gotten better at saving lives after traumatic injuries since 1970, he said, but 'there has been little emphasis on the level of improvement in the prehospital death rate due to trauma.'

This is the only way to reach the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine's lofty ambitions of reaching out to prevent as many deaths as possible. .