Group items tagged

The offensive in southern Afghanistan hasn't come without its casualties for U.S. and NATO forces there. Stripes reporter Drew Brown tells us that over the last few weeks helicopter ambulance crews from the 2nd Platoon "Gypsies" of Company C, 3rd Battalion, 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade have pulled dozens of wounded - and sometimes dead - U.S., British and Afghan troops from the battlefield. Brown's dispatch takes you to the battlefield and safely back out again with a group of dedicated medevac crewmembers.

"The Air Force will begin teaching 'battlefield acupuncture' early next year to physicians deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan," reports the Baltimore Sun's David Wood. "The initiative marks the first high-level endorsement of acupuncture by the traditionally conservative military medical community, officials said."

n April, the 3rd Infantry Division (ID) expanded its use of the Army's battlefield electronic medical recording (EMR) system, Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care (MC4), to two more garrison aid stations at Fort Stewart, Ga. The 1st Battalion, 64th Armor and 26 Brigade Support Battalion joined the Special Troops Battalion Aid Station at Fort Stewart and the 603rd Aviation Support Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga., as the first group of 21 garrison aid stations led by the 3rd ID to discontinue the use of paper medical records.

This week marks the sixth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, and there is a growing awareness of the stresses faced by Iraq veterans, families and the Army, which along with the Marine Corps, has borne the weight of the war.

Mild traumatic brain injury - more commonly known as concussion - can occur in the most benign of places, including playgrounds and playing fields.

The Army has documented that the survival rate in ongoing conflicts is over 90%, the highest recorded in modern combat. This survival rate is the product of numerous innovations such as improvements in protective equipment, improvements in evacuation, improvements in the training of combat medics, and innovations in the medical equipment and techniques available at all levels of care from self/buddy aid, through field care given by medics and into hospital care delivered in theater and in the U.S.