Patient Characteristics to Inform Military Medical Evacuation Decision-Making in Mild Isolated Head Injury.

Introduction: Management of head trauma in austere military environments is challenging as current head injury scoring systems have limited triage utility in the absence of advanced imaging. Additionally, unlike the recent past, future conflicts will be characterized by limited opportunities for aeromedical evacuation. We hypothesize that safe hospital discharge within 48 h may be an effective surrogate endpoint to identify patients appropriate for averted or delayed evacuation in military settings.

Navy En-Route Care in Future Distributed Maritime Operations: A Review of Clinician Capabilities and Roles of Care.

Objective: As the United States Navy transitions from Operation Iraqi Freedom/Operation Enduring Freedom to preparing for a near-peer competition, an increasing focus of wartime strategy relies upon a network of distributed naval assets for total sea control, known as Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO). Historically, embedded medical personnel have provided care at sea in times of war. Recent reviews of shipboard and evacuated mass casualty incidents have alluded to weaknesses in the existing Navy Medicine approach that will require advances in care provision to sustain high-quality care that would benefit from industry and civilian academic collaboration.

Estimating the Risk of Domestic Water Source Contamination Following Precipitation Events.

Climate change is expected to increase precipitation extremes, threatening water quality. In low resource settings, it is unclear which water sources are most vulnerable to contamination following rainfall events. We evaluated the relationship between rainfall and drinking water quality in southwest Guatemala where heavy rainfall is frequent and access to safe water is limited.