Highlights
- •Early STRATEVAC is a French military specificity. This political choice ensures that wounded French soldiers are repatriated to France 24 hours after their injury.
- •The French military health service easily deploys an anesthesiologist/intensive care physician to provide medical care during the flight, accepting the risk of overtriage.
- •The majority of severe patients evacuated from the Sahel do not require intensive care during the flight.
- •Greater use of emergency physicians, especially for transporting stabilized patients, would provide more personnel trained in long-distance air transport.
Abstract
Objective
Since 2013, the French Armed Forces have been engaged in the Sahel. The aim of our
work was to study the characteristics of severe patients evacuated according to the
composition of the air medical staff (ie, an anesthesiologist/intensive care physician
[AICP] or an emergency physician [EP]).
Methods
This was a retrospective cohort analysis including all French service members repatriated
from the Sahel with a speedy evacuation priority between 2013 and 2019.
Results
A total of 191 patients were evacuated. The causes were trauma for 103 patients and
disease for 88. Trauma patients included war injuries (n = 58) and nonbattle injuries
(n = 44). For disease patients, the main pathologies were cardiovascular (n = 17),
infectious (n = 17), neurologic (n = 15), and gastrointestinal (n = 12). Highly dependent
patients were significantly (P < .001) more likely to be managed by an AICP (n = 41) than an EP (n = 5). Moderately
dependent patients managed by an AICP (n = 51) were more frequently unstable hemodynamically
(n = 5 vs. n = 0, P < .05) and referred to an intensive care unit (n = 24 vs. n = 2, P < .001) than those managed by an EP (n = 41). There were no deaths in flight.
Conclusion
Greater use of EPs, especially for transporting stabilized patients, would provide
more personnel trained in long-distance air transport.
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: June 03, 2022
Footnotes
The opinions or assertions contained herein are the private views of the authors and are not to be construed as official or as reflecting the views of the Ministry of Armed Forces or of the French military health service.
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Air Medical Journal Associates. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
