Combat "Category A" calls: evaluating the prehospital timelines in a military trauma system.
OBJECTIVE
To establish the pre-hospital timelines for seriously injured UK military casualties on OP HERRICK.


METHODS
All consecutive MERT and MERT-E mobilizations from Camp Bastion, Helmand Province, between 04 May 06 and 18 Jun 07.


METHODS
Interrogation of MS Access database compiled from paper patient report forms for each casualty transported.


RESULTS
528 patients were transported. 84.6% (456) were battle casualties. There were 192 GSW and 233 casualties with blast/fragmentation injuries. 189 of 528 (35.7%) were UK Service personnel. Median time from injury to handover at the emergency department for UK military T1 casualty subset was 99 minutes.


CONCLUSIONS
The public perception of excessive timelines for pre-hospital care in Afghanistan has been distorted. The ground truth is a pre-hospital time less than one quarter of the cited 7 hours for the seriously injured subset of UK Service personnel.
McLeod
J
J
Academic Department of Military Emergency Medicine, Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, Birmingham Research Park, Vincent Drive, Birmingham B15 2SQ, UK. TNC2.ADMEM@rcdm.bham.ac.uk
Hodgetts
T
T
Mahoney
P
P
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000346:Afghanistan; D019992:Databases as Topic; D004632:Emergency Medical Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008887:Military Medicine / Q000458:organization & administration*; D008889:Military Personnel / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D013997:Time Factors; D014218:Triage / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006113:United Kingdom; D014857:Warfare; D014947:Wounds and Injuries