The history of emergency medical services response to mass casualty incidents in disasters, Saudi Arabia

Epidemiology of Emergency Medical Services-Assessed Mass Casualty Incidents according to Causes.

To effectively mitigate and reduce the burden of mass casualty incidents (MCIs), preparedness measures should be based on MCIs' epidemiological characteristics. This study aimed to describe the epidemiological characteristics and outcomes of emergency medical services (EMS)-assessed MCIs from multiple areas according to cause. Therefore, we extracted the records of all MCIs that involved ≥ 6 pa...

Routine mobile applications for emergency medical services in mass casualty incidents.

Emergency medical services (EMS) provide pre-hospital medical care and represent an important part of the rescue chain. The paramedic and physician’s work is characterized by regular day-to-day services as well as extraordinary missions within mass casualty incidents (MCIs). For several reasons, accessing, recording and communicating operational data are important tasks in any scenario of urgen...

Evaluation of disaster preparedness for mass casualty incidents in private hospitals in Central Saudi Arabia

OBJECTIVES To identify and describe the hospital disaster preparedness (HDP) in major private hospitals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Methods: This is an observational cross-sectional survey study performed in Riyadh city, Saudi Arabia between December 2015 and April 2016. Thirteen major private hospitals in Riyadh with more than 100 beds capacity were included in this investigation. Results: The 13...

Surgeons call for community response to mass casualty incidents.

Duration and predictors of emergency surgical operations - basis for medical management of mass casualty incidents

BACKGROUND Hospitals have a critically important role in the management of mass causality incidents (MCI), yet there is little information to assist emergency planners. A significantly limiting factor of a hospital's capability to treat those affected is its surgical capacity. We therefore intended to provide data about the duration and predictors of life saving operations. METHODS The data o...