Mass-casualty triage has developed from a wartime necessity to a civilian tool to ensure that constrained medical resources are directed at achieving the greatest good for the most number of people. Several primary and secondary triage tools have been developed, including Simple Treatment and Rapid Transport (START), JumpSTART, Care Flight Triage, Triage Sieve, Sacco Triage Method, Secondary As...

Given the steady rise of overdose morbidity and mortality in North America, and increasing frequency of sudden clusters of non-fatal and fatal overdoses in other jurisdictions, regional preparedness plans to respond effectively to clusters of overdoses may reduce the impact of such events on the population. On the 27th of February 2017 in Kingston, Ontario, KFL&A Public Health, in collaboration...

acute inpatient status for patients who required a stay of less than 48 hours. But now there is a growing population of patients labeled as facility observation status by payers who still require the resources generally provided by a hospital inpatient unit. These “complex” observation status patients place the hospitals and physicians in an untenable position. Unfortunately, observation has mo...

Federal funding provides state public and private health care systems the ability to build and maintain a reserve supply of ventilators for emergency response to mass casualty incidents. Studying and planning the ventilator reserve capability requires subject-matter expertise, identification of best mechanical-ventilation practices and quality care standards, and contingency planning. Natural d...

PURPOSE To describe the history, composition, and activities of the Radiation Injury Treatment Network (RITN). The Radiation Injury Treatment Network® is a cooperative effort of the National Marrow Donor Program and the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. The goals of RITN are to educate hematologists, oncologists, and stem cell transplant practitioners about their potential ...

The use of portable ultrasound devices enables a better and immediate diagnostics at the scene of a mass casualty incident. The detection of free fluid in abdomen and thorax is an important indicator for the further treatment. The gained information affects the triage of casualties, the pre-clinical medical attendance and the patient management. The presented article describes an innovative app...

Clinical reports on unintentional mass exposure to extreme concentrations of carbon dioxide are rare. We describe an industrial incident caused by a container of liquid carbon dioxide that was unintentionally opened in an enclosed working environment. Twenty-five casualties reached our emergency department. Symptoms included dyspnea, cough, dizziness, chest pain, and headache. ECGs (n=15) revea...

The purpose of this discussion is to review the use of destinations other than the hospital emergency department, to transport patients injured as a result of a mass-casualty incident (MCI). A MCI has the ability to overwhelm traditional hospital resources normally thought of as appropriate destinations for the transport of injured patients. As a result, those with less severe injuries often ar...

This short report presents a response to an article written by Cibulsky et al. (2016). The paper by Cibulsky et al. presents a useful and timely overview of the evidence surrounding the technical and operational aspects of mass casualty decontamination. It identifies three priority targets for future research, the third of which is how casualties' needs can be met in ways that best support comp...

INTRODUCTION Recently, mass-casualty incident (MCI) preparedness and training has received increasing attention at the hospital level. OBJECTIVES To review the existing evidence on the effectiveness of disaster drills, technology-based interventions and tabletop exercises in training hospital staff to respond to an MCI. METHODS A systematic, evidence-based process was conducted incorporatin...