Accuracy of Triage Systems in Disasters and Mass Casualty Incidents; a Systematic Review

Introduction:

To prioritize patients to provide them with proper services and also manage the scarce resourcesin emergencies, the use of triage systems seems to be essential. The aim of this study was to evaluate the ac-curacy of the existing triage systems in disasters and mass casualty incidents.

The present study is asystematic review of the accuracy of all triage systems worldwide. The results of this study were based on thearticles published in English language journals. In this research, all papers published from the beginning of 2000to the end of 2021 were sought through different databases. Finally, a total of 13 articles was ultimately selectedfrom 89 articles.

13 studies on the accuracy of triage systems were reviewed. The START, mSTART, SALT,Smart, Care Flight, ASAV, MPTT, Sieve and ESI triage systems, had an accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity of lessthan 90%. Only the Smart triage system had an overall accuracy of more than 90%.

According tothe findings of the current systematic review, the performance of the existing triage systems in terms of accu-racy of prioritizing the injured people and other performance indexes is not desirable. Therefore, to improvethe performance and increase the precision of triage systems, the world nations are recommended to change orrevise the indexes used in triage models and also identify other influential factors affecting the accuracy of triagesystems.