Military medicine
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Point-of-injury (POI) care requires immediate specialized assistance but delays and expertise lapses can lead to complications. In such scenarios, telementoring can benefit health practitioners by transmitting guidance from remote specialists. However, current telementoring systems are not appropriate for POI care. This article clinically evaluates our System for Telementoring with Augmented Reality (STAR), a novel telementoring system based on an augmented reality head-mounted display. The system is portable, self-contained, and displays virtual surgical guidance onto the operating field. These capabilities can facilitate telementoring in POI scenarios while mitigating limitations of conventional telementoring systems. ⋯ This work validates STAR as a viable surgical telementoring platform, which could be further explored to aid in scenarios where life-saving care must be delivered in a prehospital setting.
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This study aimed to identify delays of care due to base access security protocols at a stateside military medical treatment facility (MTF) for patients with a time-sensitive medical condition who are seeking emergency medical care at the MTF. ⋯ We identify the potential for patient harm due to delays in care resulting from the security protocols at our MTF. A review of force protection requirements with consideration for their impact on patient safety, especially in cases of time-sensitive conditions, has been conducted.
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Contextual factors (eg, diagnostic suggestion and burnout) can affect physician clinical reasoning performance, leading to diagnostic error. Yet, contextual factors have only recently been studied and none of that work focused on how physicians appraise (ie, evaluate) the clinical situation as they reason. The purpose of this qualitative study was to use appraisal to describe the effect of contextual factors on clinical reasoning. ⋯ This study suggests that one major effect of contextual factors may be that they induce emotions, which may affect the process of clinical reasoning and diagnostic error. It also suggests that uncertainty may be common in clinical practice, and we should thus further explore its impact.
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The purpose of this study was to identify the location of the peroneal tendons in relationship to the fibular groove in an asymptomatic population of elite U.S. Military Service members. ⋯ The study demonstrates that the distance between the peroneal brevis and the lateral fibular ridge is consistent throughout extremes of motion. These results further the understanding of peroneal tendon function under dynamic examination. Our findings also establish side-to-side consistency prompting a bilateral examination to help identify abnormal pathology.
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Exsanguination remains the leading cause of preventable death in military conflicts, and pediatric casualties are common. Transfusion is crucial to preserve life, but vascular access is challenging in children, so intraosseous (IO) access is often required. However, the optimal transfusion method is unclear. There was therefore the need for feasibility testing of a model for contrasting the efficacy of blood infusion devices via intravenous (IV) and IO access in immature swine with bone densities similar to children. ⋯ IV LifeFlow conferred higher flows, but higher hemolysis in this pilot study demonstrates the feasibility of an immature swine model toward determining optimal methods for resuscitating children with hemorrhagic shock.