Story by: U.S. Army Capt. John Lunieski
CAMP MARMAL, Afghanistan – “Seven patients, IED blast, arriving in 30 minutes,” a static-charged voice squelched out of the handheld radios of the German Emergency room staff. “Four Category ‘C’, three Category ‘A’” the voice continued.
Within minutes, the 8th Forward Surgical Team readied itself. The trauma room is staffed with eager professionals; intravenous bags warmed and hung in preparation while the sounds of Metallica played in the background cut the tension.
As the doctors, nurses and medics patiently waited to begin; four Norwegian ‘Category C’ patients arrived, scraped and bruised but stable and essentially unharmed. As the time passed, the four casualties received their hospital discharge paperwork. ‘Category C’ is the term used to describe a patient in need of routine medical care, classified as non-life threatening.
Doctor Reuter, the German clinical director, huddled his three trauma teams: one German, one Hungarian and one American and briefed them his latest information, “The three Category A Afghan patients [‘Category A’ is the classification of immediate need for medical attention, ideally within one hour] were taken to the Role 2 Medical Treatment Facility at Provincial Reconstruction Team [PRT] base Meymaneh, for stabilization due to the severity of their injuries. Upon arrival in Camp Marmal, each team will take one patient. We now expect them to arrive in three hours.”
What began as a relatively simple trauma evaluation and treatment was about to turn into the first test of the 8th Forward Surgical Team’s split deployment.
The conflict in Afghanistan has brought about many challenges regarding the normal operating procedures to the U.S. Army. Traditionally a Forward Surgical Team is deployed as a whole unit, establishing a 20-member surgical presence at or near the front lines of battle. Due to the geographic isolation of the camps, bases and outposts in Afghanistan, the Army opted to split forward surgical teams to two different locations.
This unorthodox split ensures all wounded personnel have an emergency surgical presence within one hour of any operational area. The team has assigned 13 of their personnel to Camp Marmal, operating with the German Army. The remaining seven soldiers are located in Meymaneh working with the Norwegian army.
“There is no doctrinal basis to split a Forward Surgical Team in combat, our mission analysis centered on providing the critical specialties required to supplement our Allies while balancing our unit strength to the greatest extent possible,” said the team’s Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge, Sgt. 1st Class Matthew Gritta.
Maj. Nathan Marsh and Maj. Linda Benavides, two surgeons assigned to the Meymaneh detachment lead the initial treatment to stabilize the three Afghan patients. They successfully performed an advanced airway intervention called a tracheotomy on one of the patients, and an external fixation to secure a broken femur on another. The detachment worked together with Swedish, German and American aviation units to utilize MEDEVAC assets to transport the patients to the next echelon of care.
As the only Role 3 hospital in Regional Command North the German Field Hospital at Camp Marmal receives the severest casualties from all the outlying FOBs including from Meymaneh. Role three is categorized as a full-service field hospital where patients can be held and treated for up to 30 days.
As soon as the flight medics handed off the patient with tracheotomy to the 8th FST at Camp Marmal the team went into its well rehearsed trauma protocol. Under the direction of the team’s trauma surgeons, Maj. Mark Buzzelli and Capt. Allan Young, the team quickly reassessed the patient’s surgical airway, continued resuscitation and performed an additional evaluation. With the aid of CT scan imaging, the team discovered the patient suffered a severely damaged right eye and complex fracture of the face and jaw.
An ophthalmologist then assessed the patient and determined the right eye as unsalvageable. The patient was directly taken to the operating room where Staff Sgt. Nick Lising prepared for the patient’s arrival. The surgeons removed the damaged eye while controlling bleeding and cleaned the patient’s wounds to prepare for a definitive surgery to occur later.
Following the surgery, the patient was transferred to the Intensive Care Unit, where he remains in stable condition. While the road to recovery will be long and involve several more surgeries to correct his fractures, the 8th FST can take pride that this Afghan soldier is alive due to their training, skill and dedicated teamwork. With two detachments of their unit operating in rigorous conditions and separated by nearly 150 miles of Afghan terrain, they have proven themselves a Forward Surgical Team.
| Date Taken: | 01.26.2012 |
| Date Posted: | 01.27.2012 05:43 |
| Story ID: | 82915 |
| Location: | CAMP MARMAL, AF |
| Web Views: | 243 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
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