Military medicine
-
Women's sex-specific health care and hygiene needs are part of military readiness for female service members and important for their leaders to ensure unit readiness. Promoting readiness that includes women's health needs contributes to the overall strength of the military. Because women comprise over 15% of today's military force and growing in proportion, readiness for military women has obtained increased attention in research and health practice. Menstruation is a sex-specific experience that must be part of the consideration for individual military readiness. Little research has explored the in-garrison readiness of women, particularly for women in high operations tempo settings, when considering menstruation management. The specific aim of this study was to explore how active duty U.S. Air Force women manage their menstruation while living day-to-day in a military culture. ⋯ This study was the first to use a qualitatively driven mixed-method design to explore military women's menstrual practices in an operational setting. This study can be used in collaboration with other evidence to promote health of military women through clinical education and support in command environments. Future research should consider other operational settings where women are expected to maintain a high level of readiness.
-
The use of photobiomodulation has been proposed to improve wound healing for the last two decades. Recent development in photobiomodulation has led to the development of a novel biophotonic platform that utilizes fluorescent light energy (FLE) within the visible spectrum of light for healing of skin inflammation and wounds. ⋯ The results presented in this article are encouraging and suggest that FLE balances different stages of wound healing, which opens the door to initiating randomized controlled clinical trials for establishing the efficacy of FLE treatment in different phases of wound healing of second-degree burns.
-
Recent advancements in virtual environment (VE) technology and the increasing use of VEs for treatment are opening up possibilities for rehearsal in safe and rich environments. Research has shown that VEs can be used to treat individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but little research has been done to suggest guidelines for creating an effective environment. The aim of this study was to determine the design of systems that would allow military veterans to rehearse potentially stressful events in a VE before having to step into the actual environment. This research evaluated the responses to six stimuli: startle sound, direct eye contact, horizontal movement across the visual field, social conflict, an abandoned item, and a crowded auditorium. Measures used included change in heart rate (ΔHR), change in subjective unit of discomfort scores, and participant behavior. ⋯ Findings imply that VEs other than virtual combat zones can elicit behavioral, emotional, and physiological responses in individuals with PTSD, and these types of environments should be further studied for use with veterans suffering from PTSD. In future studies, systems should include initial stimuli that can be configured to allow focus on specific past traumatic experiences. Stimuli should also include both a crowded room and a startle noise scenario.
-
The purpose of this investigation was to evaluate the efficacy of currently employed commercial disinfectants in a simulated austere surgical environment similarly faced by ground surgical teams in forward deployed positions. Severe contamination of traumatic combat wounds along with limitations of operations in austere environments may result in available disinfectants providing inadequate surgical instrument decontamination. ⋯ This study supports the conclusion that all evaluated disinfectants are capable of rapidly producing instruments with minimal bacterial contaminants when standard sterilization is unavailable. Therefore, when lifesaving surgical intervention must be performed in a deployed environment, austere surgical teams can confidently utilize either product with minimal risk of infection. However, of the disinfectants, Cidex OPA appears to be most effective in reducing bacterial contamination for both rapid and slow turnover of instrument usage, and thus, the disinfectants are recommended for application when sterilization is not available.
-
Short response time is critical for future military medical operations in austere settings or remote areas. Such effective patient care at the point of injury can greatly benefit from the integration of semi-autonomous robotic systems. To achieve autonomy, robots would require massive libraries of maneuvers collected with the goal of training machine learning algorithms. Although this is attainable in controlled settings, obtaining surgical data in austere settings can be difficult. Hence, in this article, we present the Dexterous Surgical Skill (DESK) database for knowledge transfer between robots. The peg transfer task was selected as it is one of the six main tasks of laparoscopic training. In addition, we provide a machine learning framework to evaluate novel transfer learning methodologies on this database. ⋯ The results indicate that simulation can be used to augment training data to enhance the performance of learned models in real scenarios. This shows potential for the future use of surgical data from the operating room in deployable surgical robots in remote areas.