Adequacy of in-mission training to treat tibial shaft fractures in mars analogue testing

Abstract

Long bone fractures are a concern in long-duration exploration missions (LDEM) where crew autonomy will exceed the current Low Earth Orbit paradigm. Current crew selection assumptions require extensive complete training and competency testing prior to flight for off-nominal situations. Analogue astronauts (n = 6) can be quickly trained to address a single fracture pattern and then competently perform the repair procedure. An easy-to-use external fixation (EZExFix) was employed to repair artificial tibial shaft fractures during an inhabited mission at the Mars Desert Research Station (Utah, USA). Bone repair safety zones were respected (23/24), participants achieved 79.2% repair success, and median completion time was 50.04 min. Just-in-time training in-mission was sufficient to become autonomous without pre-mission medical/surgical/mechanical education, regardless of learning conditions (p > 0.05). Similar techniques could be used in LDEM to increase astronauts’ autonomy in traumatic injury treatment and lower skill competency requirements used in crew selection.