By Shannon Turgeon
Photography by Joshua Franzos
Christine Leeper, assistant professor of surgery and of critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, first began working in health care as a teenager.
Her job as a volunteer EMT and firefighter was an introduction to working on the front lines of providing care to injured patients and was instrumental in establishing a path to her current role as a trauma surgeon with UPMC.
However, Leeper didn’t stop there.
During her medical training, Leeper had mentors who pointed out the knowledge gaps between pediatric and adult trauma care.
“It might surprise people to know that we generally know a lot less about how best to care for injured children compared to adults because they're often excluded from the best quality research studies,” said Leeper. “We’re forced to apply knowledge based on adult data to our pediatric injury care, but that can be a misguided strategy, especially since there are important differences between children and adults in terms of their anatomy, physiology and response to injury.”
Learning about this disparity inspired Leeper to look beyond her clinical work treating injured adults and adolescents to begin conducting research on optimal ways to resuscitate and care for severely injured children.
On Friday, Aug. 15, Leeper will present “The Efficacy of Low-Titer Group O Whole Blood Compared with Component Therapy in Civilian Trauma Patients” as part of the 2025 Senior Vice Chancellor’s Research Seminar Series. (Join the lecture here.)
Leeper’s current research focuses on hemostatic resuscitation, which is a bundle of care provided to severely injured children who are bleeding after an injury. One major aspect of this trauma care involves blood transfusions. Leeper’s lab has focused on studying the use of whole blood for transfusions versus component therapy, which involves breaking down the blood into parts such as plasma or platelets, and then attempting to reconstitute it.
“UPMC Children’s Hospital was the first center in the United States to use whole blood for pediatric trauma patients,” said Leeper. “That gave us a unique opportunity to pioneer this research where we were able to study the feasibility and then the safety—which is tremendously important in this population in particular—and some of the potential benefits or effectiveness of the whole blood.”
Leeper’s research has shown that using whole blood in pediatric patients is not only viable and safe but also offers other benefits, such as efficiency of transfusion. However, additional data are needed to determine factors such as the specific groups in which whole blood versus components would be most beneficial.
To help address the need for continued research in this area, Leeper is the principal investigator of the Massive Transfusion in Children (MATIC-2) trial, an ongoing clinical trial being conducted at 24 pediatric trauma centers around the country.
MATIC-2 is a platform trial with two domains, both of which involve methods that are currently used to treat pediatric trauma patients. One objective involves treating critically ill children using tranexamic acid, a hemostatic agent used to treat trauma-induced coagulopathy versus a placebo. The second objective involves using whole blood or component therapy. The results will demonstrate which combination of treatments is most beneficial and will hopefully inform future pediatric trauma practice guidelines.
“It's really gratifying to hear that folks are making changes to their practice based on information that we have been able to share,” Leeper continued. “The primary goal is to do better for our children and provide them with the best treatment after injury. If we can do that on any scale, this work will be impactful.”