Problems in mass-disaster dental identification: a retrospective review

Abstract

A wide variety of problems may prevent or hinder a dental-identification (ID) team in its efforts to identify mass casualties. Since these problems have been infrequently reported in a comprehensive manner, the authors identified and summarized these problems to increase the awareness of dental-ID team members and to prepare them for future mass-disaster missions. The authors analyzed 50 mass disasters--ten in which the authors as members of military dental ID teams played a major role and 40 from the literature--and summarized problems that they confronted.