More people are surviving serious crashes and incidents in Cumbria than ever before, thanks to a pioneering new addition to the medical response.

Since May, the county's dedicated air ambulance - the Great North Air Ambulance's Pride of Cumbria helicopter - has been carrying fresh frozen plasma on board.

Plasma provides vital clotting components to help blood clots form and stop bleeding. Before the introduction of plasma, patients would be stabilised using blood transfusions and then receive plasma in hospital.

The trial builds upon the already successful Blood on Board technique and, after analysing five months' of data, the charitable service believes it is already saving lives.

As a result, plasma will now be on board both the charity’s active aircraft.

Dr Rachel Hawes, an experienced GNAAS aircrew doctor and Consultant in Anaesthesia & Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine at Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI), brought ‘Blood on Board’ to the North of England in 2015.

“We’re delighted to see evidence that using fresh frozen plasma alongside red blood cell transfusions, when stabilising patients with life threatening injuries, has had such a positive impact," she said.

"Across the first five months of the new trial we have seen three unexpected survivors which is fantastic news."

She added: “We treated 36 patients using the blood on board technique during these five months, compared to 37 throughout the whole of our first year practising Blood on Board.

"This shows how much this new approach has become routine practice when needed. Major trauma patients are alive today because of the rapid transfusions they received at the scene of their accident."

GNAAS teamed up with Newcastle Hospitals, blood bikes charities in Northumbria and Cumbria and the Henry Surtees Foundation to become one of the first air ambulance charities in the UK to carry plasma as well as blood on board.