Articles: mortality.
-
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of combat casualties in modern war with an estimated 20% of casualties experiencing head injury. Since the release of the Brain Trauma Foundation's Guidelines for the Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in 1995, recommendations for management of TBI have included the avoidance of routine hyperventilation. However, both published and anecdotal data suggest that many patients with TBI are inappropriately ventilated during transport, thereby increasing the risk of morbidity and mortality from secondary brain injury. ⋯ The use of a novel ventilator that limits RR and VT may be useful in preventing hyperventilation in TBI patients. Didactic education and simulator-based feedback training may not have significant impact on improving ventilation practices in prehospital providers.
-
An Assessment of Clinical Accuracy of Vital Sign-based Triage Tools Among U.S. and Coalition Forces.
Early appropriate allocation of resources for critically injured combat casualties is essential. This is especially important when inundated with an overwhelming number of casualties where limited resources must be efficiently allocated, such as during mass casualty events. There are multiple scoring systems utilized in the prehospital combat setting, including the shock index (SI), modified shock index (MSI), simple triage and rapid treatment (START), revised trauma score (RTS), new trauma score (NTS), Glasgow Coma Scale + age + pressure (GAP), and the mechanism + GAP (MGAP) score. The optimal score for application to the combat trauma population remains unclear. ⋯ This study retrospectively applied seven triage tools to a database of 12,268 cases from the Department of Defense Trauma Registry to evaluate their performance in predicting early death or massive transfusion in combat. All scoring systems performed well with an AUROC >0.8 for both outcomes. Although the SI and MSI performed best for predicting massive transfusion (both had an AUROC of 0.89), they ranked last for assessment of mortality within 24 hours, with the other tools performing well. START, RTS, NTS, MGAP and GAP reliably identified early death and need for massive transfusion, with MGAP and GAP performing the best overall. These findings highlight the importance of assessing triage tools to best manage resources and ultimately preserve lives of traumatically wounded warfighters. Further studies are needed to explain the surprising performance discrepancy of the SI and MSI in predicting early death and massive transfusion.
-
Case Reports
When a Critically Ill Child is Oceans Away From a PICU: A Military Pediatric CCAT Mission.
A 4-year-old former 26-week premature male presented to the U. S. Naval Hospital Guam emergency department in respiratory failure secondary to human metapneumovirus requiring urgent intubation. ⋯ This pediatric critical care air transport mission highlights the complications intrinsic to air transport. Missions of this severity and length benefit from utilization of pediatric specialists to minimize morbidity and mortality. Highlighting the challenges related to preparation, air frame, and equipment malfunction should help others prepare for future pediatric air transports.
-
The 75th Ranger Regiment is an elite U.S. military special operations unit that conducted over 20 years of sustained combat operations. The Regiment has a history of providing novel and cutting-edge prehospital trauma care, advancing and translating medical initiatives, and documenting and reporting casualty care performance improvement efforts. ⋯ Documentation and analysis of casualties and care, mortality and casualty reviews, and other performance improvement efforts can guide combatant commanders, medical directors, and fighting forces to reduce preventable combat deaths and the CFR. Early hemorrhage control, blood product resuscitation, and other lifesaving interventions should be established and maintained as a standard prehospital practice to mitigate fatalities with potentially survivable injuries.
-
Case Reports
A Case of Non-Seminomatous Germ Cell Tumor Complicated by Tumor Thrombus in an Active Duty Soldier.
Testicular malignancies commonly affect adolescent and young adult males. Although they tend to respond well to cisplatin-based chemotherapy with excellent overall survival, complications such as inferior vena cava tumor thrombus are rare and can be associated with high morbidity and mortality. We present a case of tumor thrombus in a 21-year-old active duty male with a newly diagnosed stage IIIB non-seminomatous germ cell tumor presenting with extensive left lower extremity swelling. ⋯ Computed tomography imaging revealed extensive thrombus of the inferior vena cava, left iliac veins, and left gonadal vein with sparing of the left renal vein. Endovascular thrombectomy was performed with pathologic analysis confirming the presence of malignant cells consistent with tumor thrombus. The patient continued subsequent non-seminomatous germ cell tumor treatment without complications.