Urology during Afghanistan mission: lessons learned and implications for the future

摘要

Abstract Purpose Battle-related trauma is common in modern warfare and can lead to genitourinary injuries. In Western countries, urogenital injuries are rare in the civilian environment. The main objective of this study was to assess urological workload for surgeons on deployment.Material and methods Data were acquired over a period of five years of deployment in a U.S. facility in Afghanistan.Results German urological surgeons treated on average one urologic outpatient per day and performed 314 surgical interventions overall. Surgical interventions were categorized as battle-related interventions (BRIs, n?=?169, 53.8%) and nonbattle-related interventions (non-BRIs, n?=?145, 46.2%). In the BRI group, interventions were mainly performed on the external genitalia (n?=?67, 39.6%), while in the non-BRI group, endourological procedures predominated (n?=?109). This is consistent with a higher rate of abdominal or pelvic procedures performed in the BRI group (n?=?51, 30.2%).Furthermore, the types of interventions performed on the external genitalia differed significantly. In the BRI group, 58.2% (n?=?39) of interventions were scrotal explorations, but none of those procedures were performed in the non-BRI group (p?