Crush syndrome in children

Abstract

Traumatic rhabdomyolysis, or crush syndrome, is the most frequent reason for permanent disability or death as a result of earthquakes [2—4, 6—9, 12, 16, 17]. Its prevalence depends on many factors, but, first of all, it depends on the structure (stone or wooden) of the buildings, on their purpose, on the amount of children indoors, on the percentage of the country’s child population, on the time of day when the earthquake occurred, etc.[12]. For instance, in northern Afghanistan (1998) or Japan (1995), the amount of those who suffered from crush syndrome during an earthquake was a few times smaller than during earthquakes in Armenia (1988) or Neftegorsk (Sakhalin, 1995) [12].