Background: Although a review of the 1-month experience of a British intensive care unit (ICU) deployed in 2003 to Iraq outlining its care of 47 patients exists, a descriptive study outlining patient characteristics, workload, and outcomes of an ICU during a long-term deployment to Operation Iraqi Freedom is lacking in the medical literature.
Methods: Between October 19, 2005, and October 19, 2006, the 10th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) deployed in an ICU to Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad, Iraq. Staff prospectively collected patient admission data from November 1, 2005, to August 31, 2006, in handwritten logbooks. This information included nationality (United States/Iraqi/other), military versus civilian, mechanism of injury or nontrauma admission diagnosis, ICU length of stay (LOS), and outcome. These data were retrospectively reviewed for the purpose of reporting the experience of the 10th CSH ICU during its deployment.
Results: The 10th CSH ICU admitted 875 patients during the study period. This represented 27% of all hospital admissions (n = 3289). Categories of patients admitted to the ICU included United States military, US contractor, Iraqi military, Iraqi civilian, non-US contractor, coalition military personnel, and security internee. Three patients were unable to be classified due to missing information. The most common patient category of admission was Iraqi civilian (n = 472, 53.9%). Noncoalition (Iraqi civilian, Iraqi military, non-US contractors, and other noncoalition military) admissions made up 76.9% (n = 673) of all admissions. US military (n = 165) and US contractors (n = 31) made up 22.4% of all ICU admissions. Trauma-related admissions were the most common diagnoses (n = 730, 83.4%). Other admission diagnostic categories included medical (n = 125, 14.3%) and postoperative (n = 5, 0.6%) patients. A total of 15 patients (1.7%) were unable to be categorized based on diagnosis due to missing information. The most common medical diagnosis requiring ICU admission was related to cardiovascular disease (n = 51, 40.8%). Seven of the admissions to the ICU were pediatric patients (0.8%). US military personnel traumatically injured suffered significantly more explosion injuries and burns than their Iraqi military and other noncoalition military counterparts. The ICU LOS was significantly shorter in US military and US contractor patients compared to all other groups, likely a result of expeditious air evacuation to a higher level of care. This air evacuation of US personnel combined with the fact that Iraqi patients were transferred to local civilian hospitals prior to the completion of intensive care stay limited follow-up. Despite a lack of meaningful follow-up, the observed ICU all-cause mortality was 5.0% (n = 44).
Conclusions: The primary mission of a US military ICU deployed in support of combat operations is the care of its injured troops. However, the 10th CSH deployed in an urban region of Iraq in a mature theater of operations and its ICU more commonly cared for non-US patients during combat medical operations. These patients included pediatric patients as well as admissions for nontrauma illnesses. This mission was accomplished by nurses and physicians faced with unique challenges and resulted in an acceptable ICU mortality rate.