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Prehospital Triage for Mass Casualties
Questions and Answers
1
What is a mass casualty incident (MCI)?
The World Health Organization describes an MCI as a disaster and major incident characterized by a quantity, severity, and diversity of injuries in patients that can rapidly overwhelm the ability of local medical resources to deliver comprehensive and definitive medical care. Multiple resources, such as EMS, police, hospitals, and equipment, will likely be depleted/exhausted during an MCI.
2
How do we approach the multiple patients of an MCI?
It is important that a rapid and effective triage system be performed to evaluate the number and severity of patients. During an MCI, resources are limited. The goal is to perform the greatest good for the largest number of people. Overall, patients should be rapidly organized into categories by using a triage system.
3
What triage system should be used for an MCI?
There are numerous triage systems currently available that include START (simple triage and rapid treatment), SALT (sort, assess, lifesaving interventions, treatment/triage), SAVE (secondary assessment of victim endpoint), and STM (sacco triage method). No matter which system is used, the goal is to perform minimal care to determine which patients have the greatest survival chance. This can be difficult as training always encourages giving comprehensive care and saving lives, but in an MCI, there will be severely ill patients who are determined to have a poor survival chance and there should be no attempt to save their life. All triage systems organize patients using a universal color coding system.
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