Page 95 - JSOM Fall 2019

Last, there are not many publications on the treatment and References
injury patterns of MWDs. There is no centralized database to 1. Giles JT. Role of human health care providers and medical treat-
keep track of canine casualties, like the Joint Theater Trauma ment facilities in military working dog care and accessibility diffi-
Registry used for human casualties. A need exists to create culties with military working dog blood products. Veterinary Care
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prehensive picture of the treatment rendered to the MWD, as in military working dogs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Journal of Spe-
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ment programs to improve injury prevention and outcomes of 3. The K-9-Tactical Emergency Casualty Care Working Group. Oper-
MWDs . Time to treatment was not available in our dataset ational K9 Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (K9-TECC) Training
and will offer value in a future registry. The September 2018 and K9 Individual First Aid Kits (K9-IFAK) White Paper 2015.
published MWD clinical practice guideline now recommends http://www.specialoperationsmedicine.org/Documents/K9%20
Documents/Operational%20K9%20TECC%20%20IFAK%20
completion and submission of a Canine Tactical Combat Cas- White%20Paper-Final%20dated%2029%20Sep%202015.pdf
u alty Card. This new recommendation will provide the nec- Accessed 02/01/2019
8
essary documentation to establish an MWD registry. As our 4. Whelan JF. Countering enemy special purpose forces. an evolving
prehospital casualty databases grow and mature, the true mission for United States Special Operations Forces; monograph
number of canine casualties, and their treatment, will be evi- 2001. Defense Technical Information Center. https://apps.dtic.mil
dent. The authors estimate that the mortality rates of MWDs /dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a390475.pdf Accessed 02/01/2019.
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The limitations for this case series include that data were col- 7. Lagutchik M, Baker J, Balser J, et al. Trauma management of mili-
lected through nonconventional methods in the form of af- tary working dogs. Mil Med. 2018;183(2):180-189.
ter-action reviews. In addition, the first-hand account of one 8. Joint Trauma System: JTS Clinical Practice Guidelines. Military
of the authors was included in the data collection process. working dog clinical practice guideline. http://www.usaisr.amedd
Personal experience and recollection are subject to recall and .army.mil/cpgs.html. Accessed September 27, 2018.
information bias, although documentation was completed to
the best abilities of the clinician. Only 10 trauma cases provide
a limited amount of data to evaluate for trends and to inform
of future injury prevention or care. Also, the data in this case
series are data from Special Operations units and may not be
generalizable to other forces.

Conclusion Lumify
The MOI for the cases in our study included GSWs, blast in-
jury, and heat illness. Our study found that the majority of the
cases sustained GSWs and received at least one intervention in
the prehospital setting. There was a 50% overall survival rate. Powerful
The most commonly performed interventions involved those
done for hemorrhage control. The least frequently performed ultrasound.
interventions were airway interventions, the administration of
analgesics, and the completion of the TCCC Card. Built for

Further, MWDs should be included in prehospital combat in-
jury datasets because they represent a valuable asset to our prolonged
forces, and the development of lightweight, flexible armor
for MWDs should be considered. In addition, human medical eld care.
providers tasked to units with MWDs should have mandatory
basic training on trauma care for canines.
There’s always a way
to make life better.
Disclosure
The authors have no conflict of interest and have indicated
they have no financial relationships relevant to this article to
disclose.

Author Contributions
TTR conceived the study concept and collected data. LKR and
AGM analyzed the data. All authors interpreted the data. AF
provided subject matter expertise, feedback, and recommen-
dations for reporting data. LKR wrote the first draft, and all
authors read, edited, and approved the final manuscript.

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