59th MDW/PA
8/5/2013 - JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-LACKLAND, Texas -- A 20 year old United States Army soldier has sustained serious injuries from a roadside bomb in Afghanistan - 70 percent of his body is badly burned, and he has lost one of his legs.
An Air Force pararescue team flew him from the point of injury to the nearest forward operating base in Afghanistan for immediate medical care. His journey back to the states relies on Critical Care Air Transport Teams, and so does his life.
In critical condition, he will be flown by CCATT to the Afghanistan theater hospital at Bagram Air Base, and roughly 19 hours later he'll be in a hospital bed at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany - the nearest treatment center for wounded warriors coming from Afghanistan. Sixty-one hours later he is done with the transatlantic flight and at the San Antonio Military Medical Center, with all flight care conducted by CCATTs while en route.
During the Vietnam War, it took an average of 45 days to return patients to the states and only 75 percent of wounded warriors survived. The Air Force's CCATT capability allows service
members to be transported from the point of injury to a stateside hospital in less than 3 days and 98 percent survive their injuries.
The concept of CCATT was developed in the early 1990s at the 59th Medical Wing by retired Maj. Gen. P.K. Carlton and retired Col. Chris Farmer in an effort to expand the Air Force's aeromedical critical care transport capabilities. Carlton and Farmer created the first written concept of operations, a table of allowances and a plan of action for formalizing the CCATT program.
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