Citation

Arcos González P, Castro Delgado R, Cuartas Alvarez T, Garijo Gonzalo G, Martinez Monzon C, Pelaez Corres N, Rodriguez Soler A, Turégano Fuentes F. Scand. J. Trauma Resusc. Emerg. Med. 2016; 24(1): e63.

Affiliation

Hospital Universitario Gregorio Marañón, Madrid, Spain.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Scandinavian Networking Group on Trauma and Emergency Management, Publisher Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group - BMC)

DOI

10.1186/s13049-016-0255-y

PMID

27130042

PMCID

PMC4850631

Abstract

This text describes the process of development of the new Spanish Prehospital Advanced Triage Method (META) and explain its main features and contribution to prehospital triage systems in mass casualty incidents. The triage META is based in the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS) protocols, patient's anatomical injuries and mechanism of injury. It is a triage method with four stages including early identification of patients with severe trauma that would benefit from a rapid evacuation to a surgical facility and introduces a new patient flow by-passing the advanced medical post to improve evacuation. The stages of triage META are: I) Stabilization triage that classifies patients according to severity to set priorities for initial emergency treatment; II) Identifying patients requiring urgent surgical treatment, this is done at the same time than stage I and creates a new flow of patients with high priority for evacuation; III) Implementation of Advanced Trauma Life Support protocols to patients previously classified according to stablished priority; and IV) Evacuation triage, stablishing evacuation priorities in case of lacks of appropriate transport resources. The triage META is to be applied only by prehospital providers with advanced knowledge and training in advanced trauma life support care and has been designed to be implemented as prehospital procedure in mass casualty incidents (MCI).

Language: en