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Hot medical news for soldiers
February 25th, 2009 | AUSA Winter 2009 | Posted by Gina Cavallaro
Maj. Gen. George Weightman, commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command, outlined a variety of innovations in medical technology and disease prevention that soldiers can expect to see in the very near future.
Researchers are looking at a drug that can be administered intravenously for the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in far forward medical facilities. The treatment, Weightman said, could mean a quicker return to duty for mild to moderate TBI casualties, and contribute to reduced morbidity in severe trauma casualties. Phase two clinical studies are due to start next year.
Thousands of soldiers have been infected on the battlefield with Leishmaniasis, a chronic and unpleasant disease brought on by a bite from a sand flea, and hundreds have been medically evacuated from the war zone with severe cases. There is currently no FDA approved prophylactic, Weightman said, but the Army has partnered with France for a topical solution, a cream that would kill it.
A finger-mounted, minimally invasive ultrasound will be out within the next one to two years, so medics and docs can look inside the body. “We can get a lot more information to the initial providers through an imaging technique they didn’t normally have access to. If we knew a patient had a head wound, the transducer could be placed on the patient’s finger and rubbed over the patient’s head or with an abdominal injury it could image inside the abdoment to see foreign bodies or bleeding or significant injury,” he said.. The finger-mounted transducer will be ready for production next year.
And, the Defense Department, Weightman said, is collaborating with Barr Laboratories to develop a replacement to the Adenovirus type 4&7 vaccine for respiratory ailments that have afflicted mainly soldiers living in barracks. The new drug would be embedded in a pellet within an enteric-coated tablet. The pill should be available to troops in the coming year.