The Role of Dentistry in Disaster Management and Victim Identification: An Overview of Challenges in Indo-Nepal Scenario

Abstract

Background: Recently, natural disasters and terrorist activities have been leading to mass casualty situations unexpectedly around the globe. In addition to the traditional emergency medical services centering around medically trained and paramedic personnel, dental practitioners having vital skills and attributes may be important in responding to a mass casualty situation.

Objective: This paper aims at discussing the role of dentists in disaster management and the role of forensic odontology in the disaster victim identification (DVI), its status in India and some suggestions to develop the plans for same.

Materials and methods: Articles were searched in various medical databases such as Google Scholar, Pubmed Central, Sciencedirect,Wiley online Library, Scopus, Copernicus to gather all relevant information on the subject. Various keywords were used as search tool such as 'Mass disaster', 'Forensic odontology', 'Victim identification'.

Results: The search resulted in total of 170 articles which we reviewed. Due to limitation to the list of references we have constricted our review to only 39 articles for more informative literature and supported the topic of the present manuscript 'The Role of Dentistry in Disaster Management and Victim Identification: An Overview of Challenges in Indo-Nepal Scenario' more specifically.

Conclusion: Every disaster is unique and involves interplay of different factors and circumstances such as nature of disaster, number of victims and extent of body fragmentation that ultimately challenges the disaster response planning. Apart from the victim recovery and evacuation, the disaster response planning must include the established procedures for the identification of the victims of the disaster. The identification of victims essentially relies on forensic anthropology, radiology, DNA typing and fingerprints, as well as odontology.

Keywords: Forensic odontology; Mass disaster; Victim identification.