Humanitarian Surgical Care in the US Military Treatment Facilities in Afghanistan From 2002 to 2013 | Global Health | JAMA Surgery | JAMA Network
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Research Letter
January 2018

Humanitarian Surgical Care in the US Military Treatment Facilities in Afghanistan From 2002 to 2013

Sharon R. Weeks, MD1; John S. Oh, MD1; Eric A. Elster, MD2; et al Peter A. Learn, MD2
Author Affiliations Article Information
  • 1Department of Surgery, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland
  • 2Department of Surgery, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland
JAMA Surg. 2018;153(1):84-86. doi:10.1001/jamasurg.2017.3142
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Medical units of the US military have operated for more than 15 years in Afghanistan, a country with among the lowest estimates of access to safe, timely surgical and anesthesia care.1 Surgeons from the US military have delivered humanitarian surgical care (HSC) to local national civilians throughout the conflict, although previous large reports about this care focused on children.2,3 To provide a more comprehensive accounting, we conducted a retrospective study on HSC provided by deployed US military medical units to local national civilians during the Afghanistan conflict.

The Walter Reed National Military Medical Center Department of Research Programs determined that this study was exempt from review by an institutional review board and did not require participant consent as all records received and analyzed by investigators were deidentified. P < .05 was considered statistically significant. Data were collected from January 1, 2002, to March 21, 2013, and data analysis took place from July 1, 2015, to March 1, 2016.

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