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Defining the Problem, Main Objective, and Strategies of Medical Management in Mass-Casualty Incidents Caused by Terrorist Events

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2012

Itamar Ashkenazi ,
Boris Kessel ,
Oded Olsha ,
Tawfik Khashan ,
Meir Oren ,
Jacob Haspel  and
Ricardo Alfici
Itamar Ashkenazi*
Affiliation:
Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Israel
Boris Kessel
Affiliation:
Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Israel
Oded Olsha
Affiliation:
Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Israel
Tawfik Khashan
Affiliation:
Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Israel
Meir Oren
Affiliation:
Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Israel
Jacob Haspel
Affiliation:
Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Israel
Ricardo Alfici
Affiliation:
Hillel Yaffe Medical Center, Israel
*
Surgery B Department, Trauma Unit Hillel Yaffe Medical Center Hadera, POB 169 Israel 38100 E-mail: adi_ita@hotmail.com
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Abstract

Based on the experience of managing >20 such events during the last decade, the authors' understanding of a mass-casualty incident is that it is an event in which there may be many victims, but only a few that actually suffer from life-threatening injuries. To make an impact on survival, one must identify those who are severely wounded as quickly as possible and offer those patients opti-mal care. Experienced trauma physicians are the most important resource available to achieve this objective, and they should be allocated to the treat-ment of seriously injured victims instead of more traditional management roles such as triage and incident manager.

Keywords

blast injurybomb injuriesmass-casualty incidentterrorismtriage
Type
Research Article
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 82 - 89
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 2008

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