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Time to definitive care is a major determinant of trauma patient outcomes yet little is empirically known about prehospital times at the national level. We sought to determine national averages for prehospital times based on a systematic review of published literature. We performed a systematic literature search for all articles reporting prehospital times for trauma patients transported by helicopter andground ambulance over a 30-year period. Forty-nine articles were included in a final meta-analysis. Activation time, response time, on-scene time, andtransport time were abstracted from these articles. Prehospital times were also divided into urban, suburban, rural, andair transports. Statistical tests were computed using weighted arithmetic means andstandard deviations. The data were drawn from 20 states in all four U.S. Census Regions andrepresent the prehospital experience of 155,179 …