The Field Hospital Setting in Earthquake

Background: Natural and complex disasters such as earthquakes can cause a dramatic increase in the demand for emergency medical care. Local health services can be overwhelmed, and damage to clinics and hospitals can render them useless. Dispatching field hospitals, meeting the needs of the sufferers in earthquakes would seem to be the ideal response. Methods: After a systematic search, critical appraisal, and selecting the valid and reliable articles, a systematic review of the scientific literature performed and accordingly the setting for the field hospital needed in the earthquakes proposed. Results: The major affected groups were children, women and elderls. The more important problems in the patients were extremity trauma, crush syndrome, acute renal failure, and other ensuing medical complications. The medical assistances provided by field hospitals in earthquakes were diverse which are discussed in the article comprehensively. Conclusion: According to our findings, we strongly emphasize the imperative need for field hospitals in disastrous countries which can offer effective and efficient health care services for the injured people regardless of age or gender and especially cover the needs of fragile minorities. A multi-disciplinary, field hospital must include orthopaedics, general surgery and plastic surgery, anaesthesiology, internal medicine, gynaecology and obstetrics, and paediatrics specialities with enough paramedical and support staff . The presence of a nephrologist may be valuable. Outpatient treatment of post-earthquake burns should also be addressed. The presence of such field hospitals can decrease the mortality and morbidity of earthquakes to a great extent.