Objective: To study the emergency management principles of severe trauma in hospital (injury severity score ≥ 16).Methods: We used "ATP principle" to manage severe traumatic patients. The ATP principle is composed of: 1) attending surgeons offering initial management (A);2 ) teamwork commencement immediately after patients admitted to hospital (T);3) parallel principle, ie,emergency resuscitation, evaluation and laboratory test performed simultaneously (P). Clinical effects before and after applying ATP principle were retrospectively analyzed and compared.Results: During January 1, 2002 to December 31,2003, 338 patients were treated without applying ATP principle, in which ISS was 25.9±6.4, 152 cases died with the mortality being 39.2%, and the time stayed in emergency department and the time to operation room after admission were (102.8±16.7) rmin, (140.3 ±20.6) min,respectively. During January 1, 2004 to December 31,2005, 438 patients were treated based on ATP principle, in which ISS was 28.6±7.8, 87 cases died with the mortality being 19.9%, and the time in emergency department and the time to operation room after admission were (69.5 ±11.5) min, (89.6 ±9.3) min, respectively. ISS showed no significant difference between the two groups (P ＞ 0.05),but the mortality, the time stayed in emergency department and the time to operation room after admission were greatly reduced and showed significant difference between the two groups (P ＜0.05).Conclusions: Applying ATP principle to treat severe traumatic patients can shorten emergency treatment time in hospital and decrease mortality.