Citation

Craig JB, Culley JM, Tavakoli AS, Svendsen ER. Am. J. Disaster Med. 2013; 8(2): 97-111.

Affiliation

Department of Global Environmental Sciences, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2013, American Society of Disaster Medicine, Publisher Weston Medical Publishing)

DOI

10.5055/ajdm.2013.0116

PMID

24352925

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To describe the methods of evaluating currently available triage models for their efficacy in appropriately triaging the surge of patients after an all-hazards disaster.

Design: A method was developed for evaluating currently available triage models using extracted data from medical records of the victims from the Graniteville chlorine disaster.

Setting: On January 6, 2005, a freight train carrying three tanker cars of liquid chlorine was inadvertently switched onto an industrial spur in central Graniteville, SC. The train then crashed into a parked locomotive and derailed. This caused one of the chlorine tankers to rupture and immediately release ~60 tons of chlorine. Chlorine gas infiltrated the town with a population of 7,000.

Participants: This research focuses on the victims who received emergency care in South Carolina.

RESULTS: With our data mapping and decision tree logic, the authors were successful in using the available extracted clinical data to estimate triage categories for use in our study.

CONCLUSIONS: The methodology outlined in this article shows the potential use of well-designed secondary analysis methods to improve mass casualty research. The steps are reliable and repeatable and can easily be extended or applied to other disaster datasets.

Language: en