Open AccessEmergency management of the individuals potentially contaminated by radioactive material and management of the hospitalization path
Author(s) -
Alfredo Muni,
Aldo Becciolini,
Antonio Santoro,
Angelo Di Giorgio,
O. Testori,
Hamed Rouhanifar,
Roberto Zoccola,
Daria Valentini,
Donatella Bianchi,
G Lombardi,
Dalio Cecconi,
Ivo Casagranda
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
emergency care journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2282-2054
pISSN - 1826-9826
DOI - 10.4081/ecj.2008.1.30
Subject(s) - medicine , medical emergency , radiological weapon , emergency department , contamination , unit (ring theory) , emergency medicine , nursing , surgery , psychology , ecology , mathematics education , biology
The organization that has to face the radiological emergencies in a nuclear disaster or terroristic attack must be carefully planned. In the hospitals with a level one Emergency Department, it is possible to draw a pathway for the contaminated patients, based on internal resources and on the recommendations of the nuclear medicine associations (as AIMN – Associazione Italiana di Medicina Nucleare; SNM – Society of Nuclear Medicine). The “Santi Antonio e Biagio e Cesare Arrigo” hospital in Alessandria is a modern hospital and is the reference of an extended area, for its many highly specialized departments. In this background, and in a hospital with a level one Emergency Department, there are three qualified departments, able to play a primary role in the emergency management of the individuals potentially contaminated by nuclear materials: Emergency Department, Nuclear Medicine Unit and Health Physics Unit. Therefore the Alessandria Hospital is suitable to admit patients potentially contaminated by radioactive material, to determ i n e the level of contamination, to decontaminate them in the emergency decontamination area, to hospitalise and treat them in the nuclear medicine rooms