Considering the pediatric peculiarities and the difficulty of assisting this population in mass-casualty situations, this study aims to identify the main topics regarding children’s health care in mass-casualty incidents (MCIs) that are discussed in the Emergency Medicine area.

This systematic review was performed according to the recommendations of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) and registered with the PROSPERO database of systematic reviews with the number CRD42021229552. The last update of the search in the databases was on May 27, 2021 and resulted in 45 documents to be analyzed. The inclusion criteria included the peer-reviewed academic papers in English, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian languages; the databases used were PubMed, Scopus, MEDLINE/Bireme (Virtual Library of Health - VLH), and Web of Science, which execute the query on the topic, keywords, or abstracts. Also, to be included, documents that were available with full-text access through CAPES, Google, or Google Scholar. Books, non-academic research, and content in languages other than the presented ones were represented as exclusion criteria.

From the resulting papers, 21 articles served as the basis for this analysis. Revealed were the year of publication, the first author’s institution nationality, topic, and disaster management phase for each study, which allow other researchers to understand the main topics regarding children’s health care in MCIs.

The topics regarding child’s health care in MCIs found in the primary studies of this review, in order of frequency, were: Disaster Response (including the following sub-topics: simulation, education, quality of care, use of technological tools, and damage analysis); Triage; and Disaster Planning. The Emergency Medicine operation was focused on harm reduction after the occurrence of an MCI. Further studies focusing on the pre-disaster and post-disaster phases are needed.

In Maryland, there have been no military/civilian training exercises of the Medical Mutual Aid Agreement for >20 years. The aims of this paper are to describe the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS), to coordinate military and civilian medical mutual aid in response to arrival of overseas mass casualties, and to evaluate the mass-casualty reception and bed “urge” capacity of Maryland NDMS Hospitals.

Three tabletop exercises and a functional exercise were performed using a simulated, overseas, military mass-casualty event. The first tabletop exercise was with military and civilian NMDS partners.The second tested the revised NDMS activation plan. The third exercised the Authorities of State Emergency Medical System and Walter Reed Army Medical Center Directors of Emergency Medicine over Maryland NDMS hospitals, and their Medical Mutual Aid Agreement.The functional exercise used Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Program tools to evaluate reception, triage, staging, and transportation of 160 notional patients (including 20 live, moulaged “patients”) and one canine.

The first tabletop exercise identified deficiencies in operational protocols for military/civilian mass-casualty reception, triage, treatment, and problems with sharing a Unified Command. The second found improvements in the revised NDMS activation plan.The third informed expectations for NDMS hospitals. In the functional exercise, all notional patients were received, triaged, dispatched, and accounted in military and five civilian hospitals within two hours. The canine revealed deficiencies in companion/military animal reception, holding, treatment, and evacuation. Three working groups were suggested: (1) to ensure 100% compliance with triage tags, patient accountability, and return of equipment used in mass casualty events and exercises; (2) to investigate making information tech-nology and imaging networks available for Emergency Operation Centers and Incident Command; and (3) to establish NDMS training, education, and evaluation to further integrate and support civil-military operations.

The exercises facilitated military/state inter-agency coopera-tion, resulting in revisions to the Maryland Emergency Operations Plan across all key state emergency response agencies. The recommendations from these exercises likely apply to the vast majority of NDMS activities in the US.