• Military medicine · Jun 2020

    Review

    Practicing Military Medicine in Truly Austere Environments: What to Expect, How to Prepare, When to Improvise.

    • Evangelos Anagnostou, Athanasios Michas, and Christos Giannou.
    • Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Blizard Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK.
    • Mil Med. 2020 Jun 8; 185 (5-6): e656-e661.

    IntroductionThe majority of the published literature on contemporary military medicine contradicts the concept of austere. Operational medicine is part of every armed conflict around the world, while armed forces of most countries internationally have limited medical resources especially in the front line. The aim of this review is to identify the particularities of a truly austere environment and present a short guide of preparation and action for military medical personnel internationally.Materials And MethodsAn exhaustive search of the existing English literature on operational and military medicine in austere environments was carried out in EMBASE and PubMed databases.ResultsThis review included seminal and contemporary papers on the subject and synthesized a multiperspective short guide for operational medical personnel.DiscussionExperience from forward surgical teams of the U.S. Army and humanitarian teams of physicians in war zones who work under precarious and austere circumstances has shown that the management of casualties requires different strategies than in higher levels of combat casualty care and in a civilian setting. A number of factors that must be controlled can be categorized into human, environmental, equipment-related, and socioeconomic. Surgeons and other medical personnel should have knowledge of these aspects beforehand and be adequately trained in peacetime. Physicians must master a number of essential skills and drugs, and be familiar with dosage regimens and side effects.ConclusionThe military surgeon must be specially trained and prepared to use a wide range of skills in truly austere environments in contemporary conflicts.© Association of Military Surgeons of the United States 2020. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…