The future of combat trauma anesthesia in an austere environment (CTA in AE)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to identify shortfalls in combat trauma anesthesia in austere environments on the basis of discussions with other military anesthesia providers. The threat of large-scale combat operations in a multi-domain operational environment based on current data from the Ukrainian-Russian conflict and potential conflict in the Pacific Theater served as the foundation for these discussions. The principal results were 2 centrally themed proposals that were unanimous consensus from all the of the council members that are recommended to be addressed by military medical leadership. The major conclusion of this article is rapid deployment of anesthesia (and surgical assets) with the ability to be less reliant on technology and greater roles for anesthesia providers as the result of anticipated human resource shortages among all 3 military branches.