Lifesaving trauma team provides care within one hour of injuries

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Cassandra Locke
  • 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) --  Should deployed troops need on the spot surgery, there is a five-person mobile forward surgical team on standby, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice to help them.

The team -- an MFST -- can deploy in 24 to 48 hours. It is the smallest forward-deployable surgical team that can do field surgery.

The team, part of the 379th Expeditionary Medical Group, has been deployed here for a month. It has performed 38 operations and seen 107 clinic patients.

Once on location, the team can set up to operate within 15 minutes of arrival.

“In the past, you had to (forward) deploy an entire 25-bed air transportable hospital, said Lt. Col. (Dr.) Tyler Harris, a 379th Expeditionary Medical Group orthopedic surgeon.

That meant flying in more than 60 pallets of equipment, which took three C-17 Globemaster III transports. That was a slow process, the doctor said.

“But the MFST can be delivered on a single pallet in 24 to 48 hours,” he said.

The team has all the tools to perform surgery and includes a general surgeon, orthopedic surgeon, nurse, anesthesiologist and an emergency physician. They are the first element of surgical capability and provide emergency medical and surgical trauma care.

The MFST team is part of the Expeditionary Medical Support package. Unlike the air transportable hospital, which is bulky, EMEDS is modular and mobile. The medical support it provides is tailor made for the mission.

“In previous conflicts we had an unwieldy and large footprint. The MFST concept is a lighter, leaner and more rapidly deployable medical capability that can be tailored to the mission,” said Maj. (Dr.) Crystine Lee, a general surgeon.

They team can move fast. Each member carries a 70-pound backpack and several auxiliary bags. The team can hike 10 miles on foot with their gear. The group is capable of providing resuscitative trauma surgery, advance trauma life support and emergency care for 10 casualties -- or perform 20 less critical surgeries.

When not forward deploy, teams perform operations on base and with a partner hospital in the local community.

At this base, the medical group also provides the only laparoscopic surgery capability in the theater.

“Minimally invasive laparoscopic surgery has a tremendous advantage over open surgery for our Airmen, Sailors, Soldiers and Marines. Rather than making a large, six-inch incision, a telescope and long narrow instruments are inserted via three to four tiny incisions resulting in less pain and faster recovery,” Major Lee said.

Instead of needing six weeks of recovery, patients should only need a week.

“What we’re doing is better surgery than you can get in many locations in the United States,” Colonel Harris said.