Characterizing Injury among Battlefield Airmen.

摘要

U.S. Air Force Battlefield Airmen (BA) are an elite group of warfighters whose duties require members to remain in peak physical condition to maintain mission readiness. The substantial financial, material, and personnel resources required to train and maintain this elite group may be burdened by attrition and shortened careers due to illness and injury. Critical in aiding injury prevention and maintaining health for mission performance, injury characterization provides valuable data for BA training and treatment. Secondary data analyses were performed on medical data to calculate injury frequencies by body region. Descriptive analyses were conducted on the four main BA career fields, BA as a whole, and Security Forces as a control group. From 2006 to 2012, injuries to the lower extremities and vertebral column accounted for 75% of all injuries in BA. BA and Security Forces had similar injury rates. The largest subcategory of injury occurred in the 'lumbar vertebral column.' The most expensive injury was to the vertebral column, with a $615 median cost per incident injury.