Abstracts

Extract

1. Triage/Resource Table for a Burn Disaster

T. L. Palmieri, MD, FACS, FCCM, S. Taylor, PhD, J. C. Jeng, MD, FACS, D. G. Greenhalgh, MD, FACS, S. Sen, MD, FACS, J. R. Saffle, MD, FACS

Shriners Hospitals for Children and University of California Davis, Sacramento, CA; UC Davis Department of Biostatistics, Sacramento, CA; Washington Hospital Center, Washington, DC; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT

Introduction: Recent disasters highlight the need for pre-disaster planning. Deciding who to treat and who to triage is difficult in normal situations, and even more difficult during a disaster. Data driven triage tables, such as that generated from the 2002 National Burn Repository (NBR), are vital to accurately triage patients during a disaster. Our purpose was to use data from the NBR to generate a burn resource disaster triage table based on current burn treatment outcomes.

Methods: Data from the NBR after the year 2000 were audited. Records missing age, burn size, or survival status were excluded from analysis. Duplicate records, readmissions, transfers, patients with non-burn injuries, and records with unreliable data were eliminated. Resource utilization was divided into expectant (predicted mortality >90%), low (mortality 50-90%), medium (mortality 10-50%), high (mortality <10%, admission 14-21 days), very high (mortality <10%, admission <14 days), and outpatient. Separate tables were created for all patient admissions, admissions with inhalation injury and admissions without inhalation injuries.