An evaluation method for medical intervention effect of urban anthrax aerosol terrorist attacks / 第二军医大学学报

ABSTRACT

Objective To establish a quantitative evaluation method for medical treatment effect of anthrax aerosol terrorist attacks. Methods We established an evaluation framework for the medical treatment effect of anthrax events through constructing the decision tree model of medical intervention after anthrax exposure, the allocation model of key resources consumption and the model of population state transition under different intervention measures. Then, under the scenario of the anthrax terrorist attacks in the big cities of China, we analyzed and evaluated the effects of 52 intervention strategies on the number of cases, peak value, and deaths based on the discrete event simulation method. Results The intervention effect was sensitive to time delay in intervention and resource reserve. When time delay in intervention was 1 h after the attack, the resource stock increase from 25% to 100% could reduce the deaths by 59.91%; while only about 7.33% of the deaths were reduced when the intervention was performed at 145 h after the attack. The intervention strategy had little effect on the peak time of the morbidity, with the maximum value being 10.52 d and the minimum value being 9.67 d; but it had a greater impact on the peak number of patients, with the maximum value being 255 072 patients and the minimum value being 103 943 patients. Conclusion A quantitative evaluation method for medical treatment effect of anthrax aerosol terrorist attacks is established in this study, and it may be conducive to medical rescue capacity building and emergency strategy-making.