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Mass Casualties and Damage Control Orthopedics

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Orthopedics in Disasters

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Abstract

In general, a mass casualty is defined as any incident in which the existing medical service in terms of personnel resources and equipment is overwhelmed by the number and severity of injured patients generated at one time. Accordingly, the routine course of preclinical and clinical healthcare services could not be maintained. Based on this definition a wide range of events with different variations of severity and diversity of injuries are covered: major accidents (e.g., road traffic, railroads, aircraft) with a large number of injured persons, especially when taking place in rural areas; military situations with explosion and gunshot injuries served by small combat hospitals with marginal medical staff; natural disasters in medical immature systems such as the earthquake in Haiti (2010) with multiple crush injuries; disaster situations in medical well-provided, but dense populated areas with substantial destruction of infrastructure like the earthquake and tsunami in Japan (2011); and casualties of terroristic origin such as the bombing attacks in Madrid (2004) and London (2005) with a mass of injured patients suffering from blast and blunt trauma. Depending on the amount of injured patients, the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS®) concept distinguishes between incidents with multiple casualties (multiple casualty incidents) and mass casualty victims (mass casualty events).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Trauma Surgery, Hannover Medical School (MHH), Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, Hannover, D-30625, Germany

    Philipp Mommsen PD Dr. med. & Christian Macke

  2. Trauma Department, Hannover Medical School (MHH), Carl-Neuberg-Str. 1, Hannover, D-30625, Germany

    Christian Krettek FRACS, FRCSEd

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  1. Philipp Mommsen PD Dr. med.
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  2. Christian Macke
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Correspondence to Philipp Mommsen PD Dr. med. .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Orthopedics, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, California, USA

    Nikolaj Wolfson

  2. Department of Orthopedic Surgery, Bar Ilan Univ, Ziv Medical Ctr, Zefat, Israel

    Alexander Lerner

  3. Urgent Pediatric Surgery and Trauma, Clinical and Research Institute, Moscow, Russia

    Leonid Roshal

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Mommsen, P., Macke, C., Krettek, C. (2016). Mass Casualties and Damage Control Orthopedics. In: Wolfson, N., Lerner, A., Roshal, L. (eds) Orthopedics in Disasters. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-48950-5_19

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