Bonnie Taylor

Frequency and Causes of Nonbattle Injuries Air Evacuated from Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom, U.S. Army, 2001-2006

INTRODUCTION Medical information systems during past military deployments had limited injury surveillance capability as data were not accessible during deployments and did not capture causes of injury. This paper describes nonbattle injury (NBI) results from an ongoing surveillance program that identifies injury occurrences and causes during deployments for Operations Iraqi Freedom (Iraq) and Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan). METHODS U.S. Army soldiers medically air evacuated from Iraq (March 2003-December 2006) or Afghanistan (October 2001-December 2006) were identified from air evacuation records that provided demographics, casualty type, diagnosis, and patient history. For NBI cases, the patient history was used to identify and code injury cause, incident circumstances, and body region. Descriptive statistics were used to describe and compare NBIs evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan. RESULTS In all, 27,563 soldiers in Iraq and 4165 in Afghanistan were air evacuated. NBIs accounted for 35% and 36% of cases, respectively, and were the largest single category of evacuations for both operations. Distributions for leading categories of NBI diagnosis (fracture, inflammation/pain, and dislocation) and body region (back, knee, and wrist/hand) were similar for both operations. Leading NBI causes were the same for both operations-sports/physical training (19%-21%), falls/jumps (18%), and motor vehicle-related incidents (12%-16%)-but the proportion of motor vehicle incidents was higher in Iraq (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS Routinely collected air evacuation records provided the basis for ongoing injury surveillance for Iraq and Afghanistan. NBI was the largest category of evacuations from both operations. Leading NBI causes were similar to those identified for previous deployments and many should be preventable.

Non-battle injuries among U.S. Army soldiers deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001-2013

INTRODUCTION Many non-battle injuries among deployed soldiers are due to occupational-related tasks. Given that non-battle injuries are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, occupational safety and health are of great concern to the military. Some of the leading causes of non-battle injuries in the military are also common in non-military occupational settings. Nationally, falls and motor-vehicle accidents are leading causes of non-fatal occupational injuries in the civilian workforce. The objective of this research is to identify the leading causes, types, and anatomic locations of non-fatal non-battle injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq. METHODS Non-battle injuries were identified from medical air evacuation records. Causes of air evacuated injuries were identified and coded using the diagnosis and narrative patient history in the air evacuation records. Descriptive statistics were used to report the air evacuated non-battle injury rates, causes, injury types, and anatomic locations. RESULTS Between 2001 and 2013, there were 68,349 medical air evacuations from Afghanistan and Iraq. Non-battle injuries accounted for 31% of air evacuations from Afghanistan and 34% from Iraq. These injuries were the leading diagnosis category for air evacuations. The three leading causes of injury for Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively, were sports/physical training (23% and 24%), falls/jumps (19% and 16%), and military vehicle-related accidents (8% and 11%). The leading injury types were fractures (21%), overuse pain and inflammation (16%), and dislocations (11%). PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS Given that over 30% of medical evacuations of soldiers result from non-battle injuries, prevention of such conditions would substantially enhance military readiness during combat.

Development of a Low-cost, Portable Hardware Platform to Support Hands-on Learning in the Teaching of Control and Systems Theory

Abstract This paper describes the development of a hardware platform designed to support the teaching of a variety of systems engineering concepts to students at all stages of the curriculum. From concept, the hardware was designed to be low-cost, portable and robust allowing sufficient numbers of hardware units to be acquired. This enabled each student on the course to be loaned their own piece of equipment, either to work with in class or for use as a ‘take home lab’. This provided the students with a more flexible, experimental based learning experience than traditional classroom based teaching. The hardware platform consisted of a miniature three degrees-of freedom helicopter that is interfaced to a personal computer (PC) via a National Instruments myDAQ data acquisition module. This was housed in a small, foam-lined carrying case for portability. Details of the course and assessment, based around the hardware platform, are presented, along with feedback received from the students. This feedback was from the first run of a new MSc course in the spring semester of 2013, and indicated that the new hardware was received positively with the students appreciating the hands-on nature of the teaching it provided.