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Accession Number:
AD1122239
Title:
Non-combat Medical Care for Deployed Military Personnel
Report Date:
2019-05-01
Abstract:
IDA has devoted considerable research to issues surrounding medical care of U.S. military personnel injured in combat. Although also of great importance, delivery of care to the same personnel for day-to- day, non-battle medical issues has garnered less attention. To address this disparity, IDA researchers examined data from U.S. military experiences in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and in Afghanistan and surrounding areas during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). IDA found that disease and non-battle injury (DNBI) resulted in more deaths during these operations than would be expected if the same-sized population experienced peacetime mortality rates. Further, we found that day-to-day medical problems may require different medical specialties than typically needed for battle injuries. During OEF (October 2001December 2014), non-battle deaths were 22% of total deaths among U.S. military personnel (510 non-battle versus 1,836 battle deaths). In the case of OIF (March 2003 August 2010), non-battle deaths were 21% of total deaths (929 non-battle versus 3,479 battle deaths). The non-battle totals exceeded IDA estimates using peacetime mortality rates by 197 deaths in OEF and by 218 deaths in OIF. We expect that non-fatal DNBI rates were elevated as well. Iraq data from 2007 (the year of the surge in that theater) show that while various types of wounds wereprevalent among the battle-injured, conditions at least initially treated by internal medicine specialists were more prevalent among non-battle inpatient episodes. The most common outpatient diagnoses in Iraq were clustered among infectious disease as well as conditions treated byorthopedists or rheumatologists (non-surgical orthopedics). Our findings for Afghanistan during the surge year of 2010 in that theater (not shown) were similar.
Document Type:
Conference:
Journal:
Pages:
2
File Size:
0.18MB
Contracts:
Grants:
Distribution Statement:
Approved For Public Release
