Emergency Response & Disaster/Triage Principles

Mass casualty triage most commonly uses a color system: Red (immediate — life-threatening but survivable, e.g., airway compromise, uncontrolled hemorrhage), Yellow (delayed — serious but can wait briefly, e.g., stable fractures), Green (minor/"walking wounded"), and Black (expectant/deceased — injuries incompatible with survival given available resources). This differs sharply from everyday hospital prioritization: in a disaster, the sickest patient with the lowest chance of survival is deprioritized in favor of salvageable patients, because resources are the constraint, not just clinical acuity.