ANSWERING PACOM’S CALL
lives in OIF and OEF and is considered a signature, lifesaving prehospital inter- vention, according to an article in the December 2012 issue of the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, titled
“Military medical revolution: Prehospital combat casualty care.” Combat Gauze is a second-generation dressing to stop bleeding, and the Combat Ready Clamp is a junctional tourniquet for use in con- trolling severe bleeding in the groin and armpit regions of the body.
Tese achievements have spurred current efforts to develop a freeze-dried plasma product to aid in prehospital resuscita- tion of the wounded; expand the storage life of red blood cells while reducing clinical complications associated with cell aging; and ensure the safety of trans- fusion before the administration of fresh whole blood drawn at battlefield hospitals, through the development and fielding of donor-specific fresh whole-blood rapid screening tests for transfusion-related infectious
diseases. Tese lifesaving
medical interventions have far-reaching application across PACOM and any region of the world where U.S. forces are deployed.
MEDEVAC USAMRMC has taken medevac lessons learned during OIF and OEF, gathering as much data as possible from past and current military interven- tions, and is applying them to improving the
survival rates of injured Soldiers
being evacuated in the Asia-Pacific AOR through ambitious technology modern- ization efforts.
In the December 2012 issue of the Jour- nal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, the authors of an article titled “Military medical revolution: Deployed hospital and en route care” note that the increased survival rates of warfighters during OIF and OEF are attributable in part
to a 66 LIFESAVING PRESSURE
An orthopedic surgeon and researcher at the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR), a subordinate command of USAMRMC, demonstrates how to apply the Combat Ready Clamp, one of a number of lifesaving devices that USAMRMC has developed for battlefield use over the past 10 years. The clamp helps control severe bleeding in the groin and armpit regions of the body. (Photo by Steven Galvan, USAISR)
combination of faster evacuation from the battlefield to stateside medical centers (three to four days after injury, compared with weeks during the Vietnam era), and the placement of more sophisticated sta- tionary and mobile surgical care farther forward on the battlefield. PACOM’s extensive AOR and lack of en route stops during flights over water pose a unique challenge to today’s responders in evacu- ating patients with comparable speed in the Asia-Pacific region.
To augment prehospital care in this AOR, USAMRMC is outfitting refur- bished general-purpose UH-60A/L Black Hawk helicopters capable of extended-distance travel with the mede- vac mission equipment package. As of Army AL&T’s press time, 50 percent of these aircraft have been medically refur- bished, with a target date of 2020 for 100 percent completion.
Among other issues brought to light dur- ing OIF and OEF that USAMRMC has acted upon were serious concerns raised by air evacuation crews regard- ing the continuity of care in the handoff of injured warfighters between different medical teams during transport from the battlefield to more sophisticated levels of medical care. Crew members cited poor documentation of care rendered at the point of injury, a lack of decision support, outmoded systems for informing receiv- ing facilities of an incoming patient’s treatment history, and a health support system that was fragmented overall, characterized by multiple handoffs of equipment and information.
As a result, USAMRMC established the Transport Telemedicine System (TTS) program to oversee the development of capabilities to provide a near-real-time, continuous record of care that extends
Army AL&T Magazine
April–June 2014
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