title: Medical intervention in a nuclear accident.
abstract: The medical care given to a victim of a radiation accident is one aspect of a larger emergency response that involves the establishment of control of the radiation source, prevention of secondary contamination of all persons having contact with the injured, organization of a general evacuation, and panic control. We have discussed the basic knowledge required to render medical care within the first few hours and days following an industrial nuclear incident. The fact that we have such knowledge should not be taken as an argument for the survivability of populations whose countries contemplate nuclear wars. At Chernobyl, radiation acutely injured about 300 persons and killed at least 31. And yet the enterprise needed to deal with the injured, the dying, and the evacuation of thousands taxed the medical resources of a superpower. Clearly, even the limited medical response available to physicians treating radiation victims rests on an infrastructure of facilities, equipment, drugs, transportation, communication, and organization that would surely be destroyed or severely incapacitated in a nuclear exchange.
mesh_terms: D004307:Dose-Response Relationship, Radiation; D006801:Humans; D009686:Nuclear Physics; D009688:Nuclear Reactors; D011379:Prognosis; D011832:Radiation Injuries / Q000145:classification / Q000150:complications / Q000503:physiopathology*