Military medicine
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When a U. S. Navy Aircraft Carrier battle group deploys overseas, the aircraft carrier's medical department is responsible for the medical needs of over 12,000 personnel with their indigenous developmental, stress, family, alcohol, drug, and interpersonal and intrapersonal relationship difficulties. ⋯ These four medevacs were less than the number of medevacs from two previous Aircraft Carrier Battle Group Persian Gulf deployments. Importantly, these two previous WESTPAC deployments were made without having a clinical psychologist as a full-time member of the respective aircraft carrier's medical department. Providing clinical psychology/mental health services at the "tip of the spear" is an effective, beneficial, and cost-saving landmark improvement in providing quality medical care to the fleet.
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Review Case Reports
Collapse from exertional heat illness: implications and subsequent decisions.
The implications of the collapse of a soldier early in an exercise from exertional heat illness (EHI) are considered. Such soldiers may be at risk from a genetic predisposition. Malignant hyperthermia (MH) and isolated and improbable cases of EHI may be just two different expressions of the same mutated gene sequence. ⋯ The sedentary pilgrims succumbed to a very high external ambient temperature, the active soldiers to a huge output of internal metabolic heat. Only eventual advances in defining the genetics of MH and EHI will resolve the present confusion of the relationship between the two conditions. Meanwhile, there is a need to bypass considerations of the etiology of EHI and to identify the vulnerable and handicapped soldier by exposure after an interval of time to one or more exercise tolerance tests.