The Army has been making advances in battlefield medicine in treating U.S. service members in Afghanistan in a number of ways. For example, with the influx of service members living with brain injuries, the Army has created a number of concussion care centers set up to specifically treat mild traumatic brain injuries.
In the past, service members with concussions were evacuated to the Army’s medical center in Landstuhl, Germany. However, as the Army’s understanding of brain injury and recovery increased, the Army now has eleven concussion care centers in Afghanistan.
The concussion centers enable service members to receive testing, meals, counseling, and a quiet place to sleep and relax, so their brains can recover. At least 96 percent of service members treated at these centers end up returning to duty.
In performing battlefield medicine, it was found that freeze dried plasma developed by the U.S. during World War II was not being used very often, however, the French Armed Forces still use freeze dried plasma extensively.
The Army sees tremendous potential for freeze dried plasma and is currently conducting clinical trials involving two dried plasma products under the auspices of FDA and the Army’s Medical Research and Materiel Command. The Army is hopeful that these life-saving medications will soon be available on all aircrafts and ambulances.
The Army medical community knows that Ketamine, an anesthetic agent markedly decreases the amount of morphine needed to control pain. In addition, its amnestic properties can erase the memory of the pain of a traumatic event and possibly alleviate PTSD. Researchers believe that one of the causes of PTSD is a pain induced imprint of the traumatic event. So the thought is that if doctors can eliminate the pain and the memory of the event using the drug, perhaps PTSD can be prevented in the first place.
The treatment using Ketamine is already used at some of the Army’s treatment facilities but now the Army is developing a method for using it in theater. Soon, field medics will be able to give ketamine to trauma casualties using a specially designed applicator.
Reports show that deployment of aeromedical evacuations has greatly increased in the military. Today, it now takes less than 60 minutes for a medical team to fly to wounded service members and bring them back to a trauma treatment facility.
Recently the military has added major improvements to their evacuation capabilities that includes training all flight medics to become fully qualified paramedics. Also, when performing evacuations, blood transfusion can be administered in flight to replace lost blood before surgery.
Today, the military is able to fly critical care nurses into the battlefield to treat the wounded and then accompany them en route to treatment. To meet the needs in an emergency in the air, an emergency response team consisting of three to four person medical teams plus an emergency response physician travels with the injured to provide emergency treatment in flight if needed.