Airfild evacuation center: experience of the interaction between the medical service of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, the Disaster Medicine Service and the Ambulance Service

Abstract

Relevance. One of the important tasks in the provision of emergency medical care to victims of the mass-causalty incident is a medical triage in order to determine the priority of medical care and the priority of medical evacuation.Intention. To work out issues of interaction between the medical service of the Armed Forces of Russia, the Disaster Medicine Service and the Ambulance Service.Methodology. The program of the 16th All-Russian Congress “Ambulance 2017”, tactical and special exercises on the deployment of airfield evacuation center were included as a training and demonstration event . According to the plan of the exercise, several mass-causalty areas resulted from terrorist attacks along the border of the Leningrad Region.Results and discussion. To accomplish the tasks, an evacuation center was deployed with a capacity of up to 200 wounded and sick per day, evacuation capability of 32 stretcher wounded, and 4 h deployment time. During the exercise, non-invasive screening studies to proactively diagnose intracranial hematomas (portable infrared scanner), tension pneumothorax, hemopericardium, intrapleural and intra-abdominal bleeding (portable US device using FAST protocol), acute blood loss (portable laboratory analyzer) were performed in addition to standard examinations. To determine the priority of medical evacuation of victims, an improved Revised Trauma Score (RTS) scale with user-friendly software for Android mobile devices (smartphone, tablet) was used. In case of mass-causalty event and a shortage of specialized sanitary transport, those who needed urgent specialized medical care were transferred from an evacuation center via radial evacuation to specialized medical organizations subordinated to the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Health and the subjects of Russia.Conclusion. The feasibility of deploying an airfield evacuation center to eliminate the health effects of emergencies was determined by potential discrepancy between evacuation capacities of air transport and ambulances, on one hand, and the need to temporarily accommodate (including isolation) and provide emergency health care to victims.