Introduction
Onboard surface ships like destroyers and frigates, there is ROLE 1, whereas on a three-landing helicopter deck (LHD) and aircraft carrier, there is ROLE 2, with a surgical team. At sea, evacuation takes more time than on any other theater of operation. It also costs more money, so we wanted to analyze how many patients have been maintained onboard, thanks to ROLE 2. Moreover, we wanted to analyze the surgical activities on the LHD MISTRAL ROLE 2.
Methods
We performed a retrospective observational study. We retrospectively analyzed all surgery cases performed on the MISTRAL between January 1, 2011, and June 30, 2022. During this period, there were only 21 months with a surgical team ROLE 2 onboard. We included all consecutive patients who underwent minor or major surgery onboard.
Results
A total of 57 procedures were performed during the period, involving 54 patients (52 males and 2 females) with an average age of 24.4 ± 1.9 years. The most frequent pathology was abscess (pilonidal sinus abscess, axillary abscess, or perineal abscess) (n = 32; 59.2%). Only two Medical Evacuations were conducted because of surgery; the other patients who underwent surgery were maintained onboard.
Conclusions
We have shown that using ROLE 2 aboard the LHD MISTRAL decreases the use of Medical Evacuation. It also helps to perform surgery under better conditions for our sailors. Doing everything to keep sailors onboard seems to be an important point.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.