Morris Michael J, Zacher Lisa L, Jackson David A
Department of Medicine, Brooke Army Medical Center, 3851 Roger Brooke Drive, Fort Sam Houston, TX 78234, USA.
Mil Med. 2011 Oct;176(10):1157-61. doi: 10.7205/milmed-d-10-00436.
Recent news media articles have implied a direct relationship between environmental exposures such as burn pits during current deployments and the development of serious and debilitating chronic pulmonary disease. These articles suggest that the military is superficially investigating evidence that establishes a link between deployment and development of chronic lung disease. Anecdotal cases of military personnel with lung disease are detailed to suggest a systemic problem with undiagnosed and untreated pulmonary disease in deployed service members. Despite these contentions, the U.S. Army Medical Department and other agencies have been actively pursuing numerous scientific investigations into deployment-related lung disease to define the severity and prevalence of the issue. This article will review relevant research efforts by the U.S. military in the existing medical literature and address the current efforts planned by the services to systematically investigate the possibility of deployment-related pulmonary disease.
近期新闻媒体的文章暗示，当前部署期间接触诸如燃烧坑等环境因素与严重且使人衰弱的慢性肺病的发展之间存在直接关联。这些文章表明，军方正在表面地调查能证实部署与慢性肺病发展之间存在联系的证据。文中详细列举了患有肺病的军人的轶事案例，以表明部署中的军人存在未被诊断和治疗的肺病这一系统性问题。尽管有这些争议，但美国陆军医务部和其他机构一直在积极开展多项关于与部署相关的肺病的科学调查，以确定该问题的严重程度和患病率。本文将回顾美国军方在现有医学文献中的相关研究工作，并探讨各军种目前计划进行的系统性调查，以研究与部署相关的肺病的可能性。
