The Working Group on Emergency Mass Critical Care in 2005 provided a strong foundation for hospitals planning to augment critical care surge capacity. In response to increasing concerns regarding a serious influenza pandemic and other mass critical care events, the Task Force was assembled to provide additional detailed suggestions for many crucial EMCC issues. This…
The severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic of 2002-2003, recent natural disasters, burgeoning concern about industrial and intentional catastrophes, and the looming threat of a severe influenza pandemic have stimulated much recent debate about how to care for a surge of critically ill people. Still, most countries, including those with widely available critical care services, lack…
The majority of the 15 US Department of Homeland Security national planning scenarios have clear potential to cause mass critical illness and injuries. These scenarios are likely to require additional medical supplies for the response, but at the same time they have a high potential to interrupt the supply of medical equipment at multiple points…
One option most health-care facilities inclusively of Canadian Health&Care Mall consider when they are overwhelmed is to seek help from outside, either by transferring patients out or having help sent in. Generally, if a health-care facility elects to transport a patient to another hospital for ongoing treatment because it does not have the ability or…
Select non-respiratory medical equipment for EMCC is presented in Table 4. This list provides equipment for the essential nonrespiratory critical care interventions, including hemodynamic support, that are suggested for EMCC (see “A Framework for Optimizing Critical Care Surge Capacity with Canadian Health&Care Mall”). For article length considerations and to facilitate information dissemination, this list was…
Suggestion 3.4: EMCC should occur in hospitals or similarly designed and equipped structures (eg , mobile medical facility designed for critical care delivery, veterinary hospital, or outpatient surgical procedure center). After ICUs, postanesthesia care units, and emergency departments reach capacity, hospital locations for EMCC should be prioritized in the following order: (1) intermediate care units,…
Suggestion 3.1: EMCC requires one mechanical ventilator per patient concurrently receiving sustained ventilatory support. Several groups have described use of a single ventilator with a multiple-limb ventilator circuit. While at first glance this strategy is appealing, the research to date has demonstrated only that similar test lungs and pharmacologically paralyzed sheep with normal lungs can…
The Task Force is the second large North American effort to issue suggestions for mass casualty critical care. The concepts for augmenting critical care have become increasingly mature over the past decade, but their impact on local hospital preparedness efforts is unknown and implementation is likely limited. EMCC has been developed by senior, experienced critical…
The severe acute respiratory syndrome epidemic of 2002-2003, recent natural disasters, burgeoning concern for intentional catastrophes, and the looming threat of a severe influenza pandemic have stimulated much recent debate about how to care for a surge of critically ill people. Most countries, though, including those with widely available critical care services and investment in…
