Landstuhl Medical Center’s Role in the Global War on Terrorism

Abstract

Landstuhl Regional Medical Center opened its doors as an Army hospital in 1953. The routine mission was to take care of service members and their families; its other mission was to care for war casualties if and when the Cold War between the Warsaw Pact and the West became a shooting war in Europe. Fortunately, the Cold War is over and the two superpowers never really came to blows. In the interval 51 years since the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center opened its doors as a military medical facility, it has functioned almost exclusively as a referral center for the thousands of US troops, their families, and deployed civilians stationed in Europe. As shown in (Table 1), there has been episodic involvement in the care of casualties from terrorist incidents, accidents, and natural disasters for the past 30 years. In every event but one, normal services were not interrupted for more than a few days or weeks when these events occurred. There were usually only a few total patients, and the increased workload could be accommodated without changing hospital staffing or organization. The exception occurred during Operation Desert Storm, 1991. During this period, the pediatric ward and some clinics were closed for several months to support a wartime expansion. The masses of casualties that were predicted thankfully did not materialize, and Landstuhl rapidly returned to the primary mission of providing specialty services as a full-service hospital for service members and their families. The terrorist attack on America in September 2001 changed things forever. President George W. Bush declared war on the terrorists; in October 2001 Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Afghanistan began. Since then, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center has been at the forefront of military medicine and surgery, particularly surgery. All US patients are initially evaluated and treated at Aid Stations, Forward Surgical Teams, and Combat Support Hospitals deployed to Southwest Asia. Those who cannot be returned to work within a few days, or who require specialists or equipment not available in these facilities, are further evacuated to Landstuhl for evaluation and treatment. Regardless of military or civilian status, regardless of whether the complaint is an injury or an illness, whether the injury was sustained in combat or an accident, or whether the patient is an impatient or outpatient, all patients from Operation Enduring Freedom, and later from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), are brought to Landstuhl. From Landstuhl, there are several possible courses of action. Patients can be (1) treated and returned to duty (RTD) downrange; (2) definitively treated and then returned to their home station (RHS); or (3) evaluated, stabilized, and Correspondence to: Rhonda L. S. Cornum, M.D., COL, MC, USA, email: jcervantes@abchospital.com