Medevac Meeting Gold Standard

The increase in rotary lift in Afghanistan has bolstered the ability of medical personnel to bring wounded service personnel to medical treatment facilities within an hour of their injury, Lt. Gen. Eric Schoomaker, Army surgeon general, said Thursday. That span is known as “the golden hour” since the vast majority of wounded troops who arrive at a medical facility within that period will survive. “We’ve followed very closely every [medical evacuation] mission, to ensure that if it extends beyond one hour, it’s because someone’s made a conscious decision to deliver someone to a more appropriate place and it won’t compromise [the wounded warfighter’s] survival,” Schoomaker told the Defense Writers Group on Thursday in Washington, D.C. He also said medics across the services have made significant progress with the initial treatment of battlefield wounds in “the platinum 15 minutes” after they are sustained, thereby increasing survival rates.