Accuracy of prehospital triage systems for mass casualty incidents in trauma register studies
Citation: Marcussen CE, Bräuner KB, Alstrøm H, et al. Accuracy of prehospital triage systems for mass casualty incidents in trauma register studies – A systematic review and meta-analysis of diagnostic test accuracy studies. Injury. 2022;53(8):2725-33.
Language: Abstract and full text available in EN.
Free to view: No.
Funding sources: Nothing noted.
What is this? Accurate triage systems are important for prioritising the care of patients during mass casualty incidents.
In this systematic review, the authors searched for diagnostic accuracy studies of triage systems for mass casualty incidents in trauma register studies. They did not restrict their searches by date, language or type of publication and did the search in March 2022. They included 12 studies, analysing the accuracy of 15 triage systems.
What was found: The available evidence did not identify any single triage system that had higher overall accuracy compared to the other systems.
Triage Sieve had lower sensitivity but higher specificity compared to START, and CareFlight.
CareFlight has higher specificity than Military Sieve and START.
Triage Sieve was the only system that did not consider the patients’ mental status.
Implications: The authors of the review concluded that, considering the highly uncertain evidence available at the time of their review, emergency medical services should consider the use of Triage Sieve as the standard prehospital triage system.
Other considerations: The authors of the review did not discuss their findings in the context of issues relating to health equity.
This summary was prepared by Joly Ghanawi, checked by Yasmeen Saeed and Cristián Mansilla, and finalized by Mike Clarke.