2018 Volume 23 Issue 2 Pages 121-126
In recent years, the increase in terrorist attacks has come to constitute a widespread menace to the safety of citizens around the world. It is also a matter of considerable concern for Japan, where the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics will be held in 2020. TEMS (Tactical Emergency Medical Support) is a critical component of the out-of-hospital response to domestic high-threat incidents such as terrorist attacks and other intentional mass casualty-producing acts. TEMS is based on TCCC (Tactical Combat Casualty Care), which is the standard of trauma care in prehospital battlefield medicine created by the U.S. Department of Defense Committee on TCCC (Co‒TCCC). In this paper, we present an outline of TEMS and TCCC, investigate the characteristics of casualties in terrorism and discuss the role of neurosurgeons in mass casualty incidents in terrorist attacks. Given their specifics and skills, neurosurgeons are expected to be called upon to participate actively in TEMS in terrorist attack situations.
