• J Trauma Acute Care Surg · Jul 2012

    The twin terrorist attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011: the trauma center response.

    • Christine Gaarder, Joakim Jorgensen, Knut Magne Kolstadbraaten, Knut Steinar Isaksen, Jorunn Skattum, Rune Rimstad, Trine Gundem, Anders Holtan, Anders Walloe, Johan Pillgram-Larsen, and Paal Aksel Naess.
    • Department of Traumatology, Oslo University Hospital, Ulleval, Nydalen, Oslo, Norway. tinagaar@online.no
    • J Trauma Acute Care Surg. 2012 Jul 1;73(1):269-75.

    BackgroundThe terrorist attacks in Norway on July 22, 2011, consisted of a bomb explosion in central Oslo, followed by a shooting spree in a youth camp. We describe the trauma center response, identifying possible success factors and suggesting improvements for institutional major incident plans.MethodsThe in-hospital response is analyzed. Data on triage, patient flow, injuries, treatment, resources, and outcome were collected.ResultsThe explosion caused a total of 98 casualties and 8 died at scene. Ten patients were triaged to the trauma center, with the first patient arriving 18 minutes after the explosion and 7 patients within the next 19 minutes. The shooting caused 68 deaths at the scene and 61 injured. The trauma center received a total of 21 patients from the shooting incident.Surgical leadership was divided between emergency department triage with control of personnel and communication as well as control and supervision of treatment with retriage and optimal use of trauma surgical resources (dual command). Surge capacity was never exceeded in the emergency department, operating rooms, or intensive care units.Of the 31 patients treated at the trauma center, 20 had an Injury Severity Score of more than 15 and 25 required repeated operation, for a total of 125 operations during the first 4 weeks. One patient died, for a critical mortality of 5%.ConclusionA trauma center can handle many patients with severe injury, with low critical mortality when protected from a large number of walking wounded. Limited specific trauma surgical competence was managed by the adoption of a dual surgical command model.Level Of EvidenceTherapeutic/care management study, level V.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…