The main drawback of paper-based registration systems for organizing mass casualty incidents (MCIs) is that information about affected persons remains among the persons themselves. Data can be duplicated/aggregated by laborious manual copying triage tags only, and the normal medium for exchanging information are voicebased radio systems. Since MCIs normally overwhelm the regularly available res...

The catastrophic 2005 hurricane season alerted Americans to the need for a more effective response to mass casualty incidents. To address the needs of the nephrology community, the Kidney Community Emergency Response Coalition (KCERC) was formed, with representatives from more than 50 governmental agencies and private organizations. After completing phase 1 of its work, the KCERC issued recomme...

When a sports medicine doctor provides coverage for a sporting event with a large number of athletes and spectators, he or she should always be aware that the potential for a large number of injuries exists. In the event of a mass casualty incident that overwhelms the available medical resources, he or she may be the most qualified professional present to triage and organise patient care. Certa...

BACKGROUND A core task for commanders in charge of an emergency response operation is to make decisions. The purposes of the study were to describe what critical decisions the ambulance commander and the medical commander make in a mass casualty incident response and to explore what the underlying conditions affecting decision-making are. The study was conducted in the context of the 2011 gover...

BACKGROUND Mass casualty civilian shootings present an uncommon but recurring challenge to emergency services around the world and produce unique management demands. On the background of a rising threat of transnational terrorism worldwide, emergency response strategies are of critical importance. This study aims to systematically identify, describe and appraise the quality of indexed and non-i...

Since the September 11 attacks, policymakers are paying increasing attention to the adequacy of the U.S. trauma care system to handle potential mass casualty incidents. This attention has led to questions about how well the trauma system covers the population for day-to-day trauma, such as motor vehicle accidents and gunshot wounds. Although the number of trauma centers has increased in the las...

Address for reprints: Dr. Chi-Ren Hung, Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, 95 Wen Chang Road, Shin-Kong Wu Ho-Su Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan Received: Nov 5 2004. Revised: Nov 15 2004. Accepted: Dec 5 2004. TEL: 886-2-28389425 FAX: 886-2-28353547 E-mail: [email protected] Abstract To evaluate the performance of field triage, we retrospectively reviewed the data from 76 victims from mas...

Introduction: During a mass casualty incident (MCI), activating resources for response and equitable patient distribution is paramount. The Regional Hospital Coordination Center (RHCC) of large US city lacked an objective tool readily available to manage area hospitals during MCI. In hospital-rich community, spreading the throughout region decreases impact one hospital. A was needed equitably d...