Early Intervention Helps State Trooper Struck on Highway Recover
It was a call everyone who works with law enforcement dreads: A state trooper, struck on the Northway, his injuries unknown. Albany Medical Center emergency medicine physician and paramedic Warren Hayashi, MD, received that call from the New York State Police and Colonie EMS in November 2024, when an impaired driver struck Trooper Nicholas Abbondola. He was conducting a traffic stop just one year after joining the State Police force.
Dr. Hayashi rushed to the scene.
“Trooper Abbondola had facial trauma, chest trauma, and other orthopedic extremity trauma, but he was conscious,” said Dr. Hayashi. “His vital signs were borderline OK, but then his blood pressure started dropping and he was looking worse and worse.”
Dr. Hayashi had coordinated with the Emergency Department to get blood products on the way to the accident. In the ambulance, he transfused a unit of blood. “By the time we got to the hospital, his vital signs were looking better,” Dr. Hayashi said. “He was more coherent and substantially improved.”
Dr. Hayashi is part of the Department of Emergency Medicine’s Division of Prehospital and Operational Medicine team, which provides medical care to patients before they reach a hospital, including during transport. He has been recognized for his quick responses on location at medical emergencies from resuscitations, to treating entrapped patients, to amputations.
“Having Dr. Hayashi on-scene and later in the ED was tremendously valuable, both in his ability to administer and coordinate advanced life-saving medical care, and his ability to help obtain critical information for my chain of command in real time,” said State Police Captain John L. Duro. He said Dr. Hayashi was also able to help answer questions related to the criminal and administrative investigation, mandatory for such incidents.
Road to Recovery
“When a trauma patient comes in, there are many potential needs from various specialties and subspecialties they can only get here,” said Ernest Chisena, MD, a fellowship-trained trauma surgeon. For example, a trauma patient could need orthopedic surgery, neurosurgery, vascular surgery, and plastic surgery, a combination only available at Albany Medical Center.
Trooper Abbondola remembers waking up in the Intensive Care Unit, seeing his parents and his captain.
“I knew where I was and what happened, but I don’t think I knew how badly I was hurt,” he said. He was unable to move his legs and couldn’t feel his face due to a broken orbital.
Trooper Abbondola sustained broken ribs, vertebrae, left scapula, right femur and ulna; a fractured pelvis and dislocated elbow; torn ligaments in his left leg; black eyes, facial cuts, and road rash on both legs.
He spent the next month at Albany Medical Center, the region’s only Level 1 Trauma Center. The first surgery repaired his arm, stabilizing it with a metal rod, then on to his femur. The next was for his left knee and its ligaments.
“I was really nervous,” Trooper Abbondola said, but he felt at ease with orthopedic surgeon Daniel Phelan, MD: his father is a retired state trooper.
He commends his care team, from the first responders to his unit floor nurses. “Everyone went above and beyond to take care of me, to make me comfortable,” he said. “I knew I was in the right place to get better and move on.”
When it came time for his discharge to a rehabilitation facility, hospital staff and State Troopers lined the halls from his room all the way to the hospital entrance at New Scotland and Myrtle avenues, applauding him and his recovery. It was a powerful, emotional show of support.
“I had not expected that many people to be there,” he said, touched that his nurses also joined law enforcement officers for his sendoff.
“Every patient who comes through our trauma bay had their lives changed in an instant,” said Dr. Chisena. “Our goal is to get them back to the life they had before the accident.”
In the months since leaving rehab, Trooper Abbondola has been continuing physical therapy and regaining his strength. He has every intention of returning to his full duties—a motivation shared by his Albany Med team.
“I want to get back on the road. I didn’t have much time on the force, and it’s what I have always wanted to do.”