• J Trauma · Dec 2005

    The United States twenty-year experience with bombing incidents: implications for terrorism preparedness and medical response.

    • G Bobby Kapur, H Range Hutson, Mark A Davis, and Phillip L Rice.
    • Institute for International Emergency Medicine and Health, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA. kapur@gwu.edu
    • J Trauma. 2005 Dec 1; 59 (6): 1436-44.

    BackgroundTerrorist bombings remain a significant threat in the United States. However, minimal longitudinal data exists regarding the medical and public health impact because of bombings.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective analysis of the number of incidents, injuries, and deaths because of explosive, incendiary, premature, and attempted bombings from January 1983 to December 2002. Morbidity and mortality by motives, target locations, and materials used were evaluated.ResultsIn the United States, 36,110 bombing incidents, 5,931 injuries, and 699 deaths were reported. There were 21,237 (58.8%) explosive bombings, 6,185 (17.1%) incendiary bombings, 1,107 (3.1%) premature bombings, and 7,581 (21.0%) attempted bombings. For explosive bombings with known motives, 72.9% of injuries and 73.8% of deaths were because of homicide. For incendiary bombings with known motives, 68.2% of injuries were because of extortion and revenge, and 53.5% of deaths were due to homicide. Private residences accounted for 29.0% of incidents, 31.5% of injuries, and 55.5% of deaths. Government installations accounted for 4.4% of incidents but were the site of 12.7% of injuries and 25.5% of deaths. In bombings with known materials, nitrate-based fertilizers accounted for 36.2% of injuries and 30.4% of deaths, and smokeless powder and black powder accounted for 33.2% of injuries and 27.1% of deaths.ConclusionsIllegal bombings and related injuries commonly occur in the United States. Because of the easy availability of bombing materials, government agencies and healthcare providers should prepare for potential mass-casualty bombings.

      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…

Want more great medical articles?

Keep up to date with a free trial of metajournal, personalized for your practice.
1,694,794 articles already indexed!

We guarantee your privacy. Your email address will not be shared.