Unmanned aerial vehicles: usefulness for victim searches and triage in disasters
Pardo Ríos M, Pérez Alonso N, Lasheras Velasco J, Juguera Rodríguez L, López Ayuso B, Muñoz Solera R, Martínez Riquelme C, Nieto Fernández-Pacheco A
Affiliation of the authors
Gerencia de Urgencias y Emergencias 061 de la Región de Murcia, Spain. Facultad de Enfermería y/o del Máster Oficial de Enfermería de Urgencias, Emergencias y Cuidados Especiales de la Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM), Spain. Centro de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (CENTIC) de la Región de Murcia, Facultad de Informática de la Universidad San Antonio de Murcia (UCAM), Spain. Ingeniería Informática de la Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM), Spain. Ingeniería Informática, Experto en Tecnología Wearable y aplicaciones informáticas para la salud. Doctora en Matemáticas, Experta en Estadística.
Pardo Ríos M, Pérez Alonso N, Lasheras Velasco J, Juguera Rodríguez L, López Ayuso B, Muñoz Solera R, et al. Unmanned aerial vehicles: usefulness for victim searches and triage in disasters. Emergencias. 2016;28:109-13
To analyze the influence of drones equipped with thermal cameras for finding victims and aiding triage during disasters.
Methods.
We carried out a prospective, cross-sectional analysis and 6 experimental simulations, each with 25 victims to locate and triage. Nurses were randomized to a control group or a drone group. Drone-group nurses were given access to images from the thermal cameras 10 minutes before the exercise started.
Results.
The mean (SD) distance the nurses searched in the control group (1091.11 [146.41] m) was significantly greater than the distance searched by nurses in the drone group (920 [ 71.93] m (P = .0031). The control group found a mean of 66.7% of the victims, a significantly smaller percentage than the drone group’s mean of 92% (P = .0001). Triage quality (undertriage and overtriage) was similar in the 2 groups as shown by maneuvers undertaken to open airways and control bleeding.
Conclusion. Drones with thermal cameras were useful in searching for victims of simulated disasters in this study, although they had no impact on the quality of the nurses’ triage.
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