RT Book, Section A1 Chung, Sarita A1 Adirim, Terry A2 Schafermeyer, Robert A2 Tenenbein, Milton A2 Macias, Charles G. A2 Sharieff, Ghazala Q. A2 Yamamoto, Loren G. SR Print(0) ID 1105688458 T1 Disaster Preparedness T2 Strange and Schafermeyer's Pediatric Emergency Medicine, 4e YR 2014 FD 2014 PB McGraw-Hill Education PP New York, NY SN 978-0-07-182926-7 LK accesspediatrics.mhmedical.com/content.aspx?aid=1105688458 RD 2024/03/28 AB Children have physiologic, developmental, and behavioral differences from adults that influence their management during a mass casualty event (MCE).During an MCE, emergency department (ED) staff should expect casualties to come in two waves (dual wave phenomenon): The first wave typically appears after about 15 to 30 minutes and largely consists of “the walking wounded,” and the second wave typically arrives in 30 to 60 minutes after the onset of the event and is comprised of the more critically ill or injured patients.Physiological differences between adults and children make adult MCE triage protocols inappropriate for infants and children.EDs should have guides with predetermined medication dosing based on weight, and equipment sizes based on age, ready for mass casualties, so that staff members do not have to perform calculations during events.Decontamination of children generally takes longer than that of adults and should be done as a family unit to facilitate children's cooperation and minimize the psychological impact to children.