engleski

Triage Protocols for Critical-Care Patients in Disaster Conditions.

The medical and healthcare needs of a community during disaster conditions could be drastically changed. Hospital capacities, especially the number of intensive-care unit beds and ventilators, are usually constant, so careful planning and great efforts should be made to adapt to altered circumstances. Triage for critical care patients is tertiary triage and is provided according to the hospital disaster plan, which defines triage protocols, the triage officer, and the triage support team. The triage protocols are based on inclusion and exclusion criteria combined with prioritization tools and stratifies patients into priority categories. The most recommended prioritization tool is the SOFA scoring system. The triage process is dynamic, and patients' medical conditions should be periodically reassessed and their priority category amended if necessary. When a major incident is declared, it may be necessary to triage non-disaster patients in the intensive-care unit to free beds and respirators for expected disaster casualties. Triage protocols should be objective, ethical, transparent, and publicly disclosed to avoid a collision between individual rights and community needs.

Triage, critical care, disaster

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