Surgeon's skills stay sharp helping base

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Jess Harvey
  • 7th Air Expeditionary Wing
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam (AFPN) --  The doctor and nurses, shrouded in gowns, gloves and facemasks, lay stainless-steel scalpels and clamps neatly on the plastic-covered tray next to the patient.

One of the nurses squeezes around the operating stretcher to adjust the overhead lamps while the doctor picks up his tools and prepares to make the first incision.

In the background, the wind brushes the outside of the expeditionary medical support, or EMEDS, tent. This serves as the only reminder that this is not a typical operating room.

The patient, Senior Airman Benjamin Collins from the 36th Security Forces Squadron here, had a painful cyst and chose to have it removed at the field hospital tent raised to support the 7th Air Expeditionary Wing.

He mentioned he had been a part of field exercises and deployments during his four years in the service and did not have any worries about having the cyst removed in a tent.

"If I were out in the field, this is how they would take care of it," said Collins. "I've been here in the tent, and (the staff) keeps everything really sanitary."

Maj. (Dr.) David Copp, a general surgeon from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, said that pilonidal cysts, the type that Collins had, are a common ailment.

"His problem was a very common reason people were sent home from Vietnam," said the doctor. "It could have caused him more severe problems if he'd been deployed."

Although Collins is not deployed, Copp said EMEDS tries to augment the Andersen clinic when possible.

"Since we do have the specialists, we will also see (some) patients who are typically sent downtown," said Copp.

The base clinic handles family practice issues, but most patients requiring more elaborate care go to Naval Hospital Guam at the other end of the island.

"The clinic at Andersen does not have a surgeon on hand," said Copp. "Rather than have that member go to Navy and have the same procedure performed, we completed it here."

EMEDS is integrated with the clinic at Anderson to a small degree and sees an occasional patient who is beyond the expertise of the physicians in the clinic, he said.

They do it for proficiency sake, said Lt. Col. Scott Russi, 7th EMEDS commander.

"It was a chance to do something here, to use our equipment and to maintain our skills," said Russi. The EMEDS clinic is basically an emergency room, operating room and an intensive care unit all in one.

"The EMEDS is; for the most part; a mobile hospital," said Copp. "We have capabilities that extend beyond Andersen's clinic that include surgical capability as well as several experts in trauma, critical care and emergency medicine.

"The design of EMEDS is to take care of warfighting personnel, and the injuries that are encountered during missions," he said.

Their mission here is to take care of the deployed troops, said Russi. Andersen has a clinic, and there is the Naval hospital downtown, but the EMEDS clinic is much better suited to support the deployed troops, especially if they have to relocate.

"Everything we have here fits on a C-130 (Hercules)," said Russi. "That makes it easier to move."

"We could take this (equipment) and move it to a new area if we needed to," said Copp, who added it could be done within two hours. "I've exercised this out in an hour and 45 minutes. We had it all set up, and the only reason it took that long was because it took 15 minutes to get the communications up." (Courtesy of Pacific Air Forces News Service)