Critical Care Air Transport in Northern India: A Retrospective Analysis
critical care medicine has developed and progressed by leaps and bounds in the recent past which resulted in better outcomes of critical patients.(1) Military operations along with natural or manmade disasters are two scenarios where critical patients are left in austere environment or the environment is made austere. Providing advanced life support facilities in the austere environment may not prove to be economical or sustainable, hence the need arose for mobile ICU or the CCATT (Critical Care Air Transport Team) for immediate and faster transport of critical patients to advanced ICU centers. Firstly, by doing this the critical patient is not denied the best available post resuscitation care and secondly the burden on medical resources at the periphery is reduced and they can concentrate on managing the less critical patients. Military medical concept of ‘stay and stabilize’ over the time, changed to ‘scoop and scoot’ with ‘in transit stabilization’. Aero medical transport has its own challenges and constraints.(2) This requires proper planning and prior training of the CCATT. Although protocols are not formulated, endeavour is to integrate initial resuscitation of critical causalities at the peripheral medical set up with optimal post resuscitation care at advanced ICUs. CCATTs are tasked to simultaneously manage multiple high-severity casualties, and each team is trained to manage multisystem trauma, burns, shock, respiratory failure, and other serious illnesses and injuries.
