Role of Forensic Medicine in Mass Casualty Incident

During a multiple-casualty incident, a large casualty caseload adversely affects the quality of trauma care given to individual patients. From a trauma care perspective, the goal of the hospital emergency plan is to provide severely injured patients with a level of care that approximates the care given to similar patients under normal conditions. Therefore, the realistic admitting capacity of the hospital is determined primarily by the number of trauma teams that the hospital can deploy. Effective triage of these casualties is often not straightforward, with high over triage rates. Simplified triage algorithms may be a practical alternative to more elaborate schemes. The concept of minimal acceptable care is the key to a staged management approach during a mass-casualty incident. However, any plan without provision for the dead during a mass casualty incident will obviously be found lacking, leaving a massive and unprepared crisis.