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Prehospital Response Time Delays for Emergency Patients in Events of Concurrent Mass Casualty Incidents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 September 2017

Jungeun Kim ,
Chu Hyun Kim ,
Sang Do Shin  and
Ju Ok Park
Jungeun Kim
Affiliation:
Laboratory of Emergency Medical Services, Seoul National University Hospital Biomedical Research Institute, Seoul, Korea
Chu Hyun Kim*
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Inje University College of Medicine and Seoul Paik Hospital, Seoul, Korea
Sang Do Shin
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Ju Ok Park
Affiliation:
Department of Emergency Medicine, Hallym University College of Medicine and Dongtan Sacred Heart Hospital, Hwaseong, Gyeonggi, Korea
*
Correspondence and reprint requests to Chu Hyun Kim, MD, PhD, Department of Emergency Medicine, Inje University College of Medicine and Seoul Paik Hospital, 85, 2-Ga, Jeo-dong, Jung-Gu, Seoul 100-032, Korea (e-mail: juliannnn@hanmail.net).
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Abstract

Objective

We investigated the extent of delays in the response time of emergency medical services (EMS) as an impact of mass casualty incidences (MCIs) in the same area.

Methods

We defined an MCI case as an event that resulted in 6 or more patients being transported by EMS, and prehospital response time as the time from the call to arrival at the scene. We matched patients before and after MCIs by dividing them into categories of 3 hours before, 0-1 hour after, 1-2 hours after, and 2-3 hours after the MCIs. We compared prehospital response times using multiple linear regression.

Results

A total of 33,276 EMS-treated patients were matched. The prehospital response time for the category of 3 hours before the MCIs was 8.8 minutes (SD: 8.2), treated as the reference, whereas that for the category of 0-1 hour after the MCI was 11.3 minutes (P<0.01). The multiple linear regression analysis revealed that prehospital response time increased by 2.5 minutes (95% CI: 2.3-2.8) during the first hour and by 0.3 minutes (95% CI: 0.1-0.6) during the second hour after MCIs.

Conclusion

There were significant delays in the prehospital response time for emergency patients after MCIs, and it lasted for 2 hours as the spillover effect. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:94–100)

Keywords

prehospital response timedelaymass casualty incidentout-of-hospital cardiac arrest
Type
Original Research
Information
Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , February 2018 , pp. 94 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, Inc. 2017 

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