Mobile Emergency Room Offers Troops Peace of Mind
Posted on: Friday, 4 April 2008, 15:00 CDT
KANDAHAR PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- When a Marine or sailor is injured, time becomes the enemy.
A bleeding patient may not be able to make it an hour or two to a hospital. So the Navy brings the hospital to them.
Cmdr. Rob Catania is the officer in charge of Combat Logistics Battalion-24's shock trauma platoon, forward resuscitative surgical system. The FRSS, as they call it, is a mobile medical facility -- a way to bring surgical capabilities closer to the battlefield.
The facility -- a collection of a few tents -- has "everything you'd find in an emergency room back home. We just have to carry it," Catania said.
One tent is set up for life- or limb-saving surgery. Another is a mobile intensive care unit. That room leads to an operating room with two general surgeons, an anesthesiologist and an operating room technician.
In the FRSS, doctors do "damage control surgery," getting the patients stable and ready to move to another hospital, where they can receive further surgery.
"Our job is basically to keep the patients alive and get them to definitive care," Catania said.
Having a facility with surgeons and doctors so close can save lives, said Petty Officer 3rd Class Yomaira Gonzalez, a laboratory technician and corpsman. And that is why they are there, she said: "to save our Marines."
One of the more difficult things is documenting what each physician has done and what still needs to be done as the patient moves from hospital to hospital, Catania said. But the Navy has gotten much better at communication as the war has progressed, he said.
Having the FRSS available close to the operating forces helps make the ground troops feel more comfortable, said Petty Officer 2nd Class Christina Lumpkin, a preventive medicine technician and corpsman.
Catania agreed.
"They're very happy to have us in the vicinity," he said. "It gives them peace of mind, so they can worry about their jobs."
Source: The Daily News
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