Availability of a pediatric trauma center in a disaster surge decreases triage time of the pediatric surge population: a population kinetics model.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The concept of disaster surge has arisen in recent years to describe the phenomenon of severely increased demands on healthcare systems resulting from catastrophic mass casualty events (MCEs) such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The major challenge in dealing with a disaster surge is the efficient triage and utilization of the healthcare resources appropriate to the magnitude and character of the affected population in terms of its demographics and the types of injuries that have been sustained.

Results

In this paper a deterministic population kinetics model is used to predict the effect of the availability of a pediatric trauma center (PTC) upon the response to an arbitrary disaster surge as a function of the rates of pediatric patients' admission to

SUBMITTER: Barthel ER 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3224559 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature