Thomas Leclerc

Why burn disasters overwhelm systems faster than other mass casualty events
Burn disaters can be distinguished from other mass casualty events with following specific features.

In medium to high revenue countries, severe burns are a rarely occurring condition. But their medical and surgical management is highly resource intensive and mobilises large multidisciplinary teams of highly speciliased healthcare professionals in burn centres. Accordingly, the paucity of burn centres is the main bottleneck of crisis management in a burn disaster, whereas other mass casualty events typically meet their largest challenge on scene.

Provided appropriate specialised burn care can be delivered, the lethality of severe burns is low as compared to other trauma, typically more delayed, and considerably reduced by relatively simple initial management measures. This suggests a possibility to achieve remarkable outcome in most patients even in large scale burn disasters, provided a stepwise organisation and optimal triage measures are implemented, as exemplified by recent events.

Finally, the high hospital length of stay of burned patients and their heavy human and logistical resource requirements, both in acute burn centres then in specialised rehabilitation centres, cause a major and lasting strain on these structures.

This presentation discusses aforementioned points and analyses how it influences organisational choices for burn disaster response.