Emergency rooms unprepared for bio-attacks.

• Author: Pappalardo, Joe

Of all the safety nets designed to cope with a biological attack in U.S. cities, emergency rooms are among the least prepared, lacking diagnostic tools and trained personnel, experts told a Senate panel.

"Emergency rooms are overcrowded, understaffed and have almost no surge capacity to handle a mass casualties," Harvey Meislin, head of the University of Arizona's Department of Medicine, told the Senate's subcommittee on terrorism, technology and homeland security.

Among the technologies that would help fill the gaps is a diagnostic tool that would identify exposure to a biological agent definitively, with a simple blood test, researchers and proponents said. Armed with such a device, emergency room personnel could identify those infected from the "walking worried" and alert higher authorities to the presence of a natural or manmade outbreak.

Current pathogen identification tests require growing cultures or testing against antibodies, which take 24 to 48 hours.

The equipment proposed by the Arizona researchers would use the reactions of individual genes to biological agents to identify them, giving an ER doctor or nurse the power to make conclusive diagnoses in five minutes. The technology, however, still remains several years away.

"The problem is getting the device to a level of sensitivity and specificity," Meislin said.

Sen. Jon Kyl and Rep. J.D. Hayworth, both Arizona Republicans, requested $25 million for medical research for biological preparedness as part of the...