Initial 67th Combat Support Hospital Optometry Services in Taszar, Hungary, during Operation Joint Endeavor.

BACKGROUND

Existing U.S. Army personnel and equipment authorization documents do not recognize the need for optometry services at deployed combat support hospitals (CSHs). The specific hospital tasked with the mission of supporting Operation Joint Endeavor from a support base in Taszar, Hungary, did not have any documentation authorizing the assignment of ophthalmology assets. Current Army doctrine stipulates the presence of an area support medical battalion, with assigned optometry assets, to deploy and operate near a CSH. However, in the winter of 1995, when Operation Joint Endeavor began, there were no area support medical battalions staffed in Europe, and none deployed to the Taszar support base. Therefore, the 67th CSH's mission to provide comprehensive inpatient and outpatient care on a contingency basis to all personnel in the area of operations did not have a doctrinal means of supporting an eye care requirement.

OBJECTIVE

To meet this eye care shortfall between doctrinal policy and actual operational needs or requirements, the optometry staff of the 67th CSH scavenged two optometry field sets from old Operation Desert Storm war stock and deployed with the main body of hospital personnel to Taszar, Hungary, on December 18, 1995. In doing so, the Table of Organization and Equipment was thus supplemented with extra equipment and personnel, beyond doctrinal guidelines, to accomplish the assigned mission.

METHOD

This report is a prospectively gathered summary of the eye care provided from December 18, 1995, to September 15, 1996.

RESULTS

A total of 1,471 patients were examined and treated, averaging 7 patients per day. Less than half of the case load was medical in nature, with the remaining being refractive in nature or for periodic examination. The most common pathologies seen were soft contact lens complications, non-contact lens corneal pathology, conjunctivitis (bacterial, viral, and adenoviral), and ocular trauma (foreign bodies, chemical splashes, blunt injury). Refractive cases during the entire deployment involved primarily myopes requiring increased correction. However, close to half of the refractive cases in the first month involved habitually uncorrected low hyperopes and early presbyopes.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on the productivity presented by the case load demand of this CSH's area medical support mission, an eye care need was clearly met, adding to the overall mission success of the 67th CSH.