STS 2022 DAY 2 — Yesterday at STS 2022, Cameron D. Wright, MD, Army Medical Corps, USAR (ret.), shared unforgettable experiences and lessons learned while caring for servicemembers and civilians during tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dr. Wright, from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, took attendees on a journey through his time served, from backwoods training missions and cargo-cramped transport helicopters, barracks life that could swing suddenly from boredom to chaos, to blackouts, blasts, bunkers, and astonishing massive-severity wounds that he “certainly never saw in surgical residency.”
“Of course there are challenges in this field of endeavor,” Dr. Wright said. “There's excitement, there's unusual travel. There's care for the wounded military—you experience a pure form of medicine, and you experience military life.”
Along with painting a vivid picture of the climate—both physical and political—of military commission and war-zone landscapes, Dr. Wright described several exceptional patient encounters. For example, while he and his team were operating on more urgent cases, he noticed one soldier who had been triaged to “walking wounded” with a mild headache after a suicide bombing. He suggested an x-ray. “Lo and behold, here’s part of the rover bearings in his brain. I looked at his chest—he had a little entrance wound above his deltoid—and indeed he had intrathoracic ball bearings as well.”
And then there was “worm man,” an older Afghan civilian taxi driver who had been shot multiple times by the Taliban for unknown reasons. He had small bowel perforations and was colonized with Ascaris nematodes. “We actually had to stuff the worms back in as we were sewing the holes closed,” Dr. Wright said. “About 30% of Afghans are colonized with ascaris.”
Dr. Wright took moments to honor fellow military surgeons and pioneers—including the lecture’s namesake, C. Walton Lillehei, MD, PhD—and to tell the stories of soldiers lost in conflict. He expressed his pride in serving alongside his son James, a Marine Corps machine gunner, in Iraq, and he touted the bravery of military dogs, some of whom he cared for in the trauma bay, and how soldiers paid them tribute for their service.
“Civilians always suffer the most,” Dr. Wright said. “Rebuilding a failed nation state is fruitless or is a waste of lives and treasures. And there’s much evil around in the world, but we cannot totally stop it.”
Instead, he emphasized the many ways that surgeons can volunteer. “Military is only one way to give back,” he said. “There are many opportunities in the United States, South America, Africa, Southeast Asia. It's important to realize that many of our STS cardiothoracic surgeons have performed fulfilling volunteer missions. It's very rewarding, and the rewards definitely outweigh the cost.”
A recording of Dr. Wright’s lecture is available on the meeting platform. There’s still time to register and join STS 2022 for more compelling lectures, groundbreaking science, and technological advancements at sts.org/annualmeeting.