Military medicine
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The aim of this study was to determine the unique and combined associations of various military stress exposures with positive and negative mental health symptoms in active duty service members. ⋯ Military stressors may adversely influence self-reported symptoms of negative mental health, but deployment experience and combat exposure may confer stress inoculation.
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Back pain is a major reason for sick leaves and disability pension in primary health care. The prevalence of back pain among adolescents and young adults is believed to be increasing, and back pain during military service predicts unspecified back pain during later life. The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence and risk factors of back pain among conscripts in compulsory Finnish military service during the period 1987-2005. ⋯ The prevalence of back pain among male Finnish military service conscripts has not changed in the last 25 years. Twenty percent of conscripts suffer from back-related problems during their military service. The majority of the visits to health centers occurred in the first service months. The risk factors for back pain include smoking, low education level, and musculoskeletal disorders in general. Educating the young people about harms of tobacco and supporting education is a way to influence the back pain prevalence. Strength of this study is a good generalized population sample of young Finnish adult males because of the fact that the Finnish military service is compulsory for all men. All medical records of all visits to the Garrison Health Care Centre were available, and all the conscripts filled the same pre-service questionnaire, minimizing the possibility of selection bias. The sample size was also large. Weakness of this study is that the service time changed during the study period and in the latest conscript group born in 1989, data collection and the data available for this cohort was limited, because nearly half of the conscripts had not yet started their service. The Finnish military service is compulsory only for men and because of the low number of female conscripts, they were excluded from this study. Diagnoses were also missing from 70% of the back-related visits, and these visits were recorded as back pain-related visits according to the reason for seeking care.
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The Office of Naval Research sponsored the Blast Load Assessment Sense and Test program to develop a rapid, in-field solution that could be used by team leaders, commanders, and medical personnel to make science-based stand-down decisions for service members exposed to blast overpressure. Toward this goal, the authors propose an ensemble approach based on machine learning (ML) methods to derive a threshold surface for potential neurological deficits that encompasses the intensity of the blast events, the number of exposures, and the period over which the exposures occurred. Because of collection challenges presented by human subjects, the authors utilized data representing a comprehensive set of measures, including structural, behavioral, and cellular changes, from preclinical large animal studies on minipig models. This article describes the development process used to procure the resulting methodology from these studies. ⋯ The ensemble approach facilitated the identification of a pattern of changes across multiple variables to predict the occurrence of changes in brain function. Many changes observed after blast exposure were subtle, making them difficult to measure in human subjects. ML methodologies applied to minipig data demonstrated the value of these techniques in analyzing complex datasets to complement human studies. Importantly, the threshold surface supports the development of science-based blast exposure guidelines.
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Although active duty women (ADW) represent over 17% of the total U. S. Armed Forces, there are few evidence-based guidelines to promote the health of women who serve in contemporary military roles. ⋯ Optimizing the health of this population is critical to maintaining the strength and readiness of our U. S. Armed Forces.
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The Department of Defense spends more than $3 billion annually on medical costs of lifestyle-related morbidity. Military service members and veterans engage in unhealthy behaviors at a higher rate than the civilian population. Lifestyle medicine may mitigate lifestyle-related chronic diseases and increase medical readiness in the U.S. Military. However, patients' perspectives in a military community regarding a lifestyle medicine-based approach to health care have not been studied. The purpose of this study was to assess the knowledge and attitudes of and interest in lifestyle medicine-based care within a military community. ⋯ Despite an overall low level of awareness of lifestyle medicine, most respondents expressed interest in a lifestyle medicine approach to health care, with food/nutrition and sleep ranked as the most important domains. Lower levels of education may be a potential barrier to patient willingness to engage in lifestyle medicine care. Service members in combat arms occupational specialties may represent a potential target population for smoking cessation interventions. Further research with a larger sample more proportionately inclusive of all military service branches is needed.