VCURES Speaks at NASA Human Operations 2001 Conference

Shortly after the September 11th tragedy, NASA invited experts from around the country to participate in a conference focusing on the technologies of greatest value to human emergency operations during an emergency, be it an urban community, the combat setting, or the vast reaches of space. The conference was called Human Operations 2001 (http://advtech.jsc.nasa.gov/humanOps.shtm). The conference was an invitation only event with participants chosen from the biomedical community-representing academic, NASA, the military, and industry.

Kevin Ward, MD, Associate VCURES Director and Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine and Physiology was chosen as one of the conference's selected speakers. The title of Dr. Ward's presentation was entitled: The Crisis of Triage and Treatment in Diverse Patient Groups: The Need for Multi-Parametric Noninvasive Monitoring. The presentation focused on the problems of rapidly and accurately triaging large numbers of mass casualties with diverse physiologies in the civilian world.

Unlike the combat setting where wounded combatants are in a narrower age range and in generally good health, large numbers of injured civilians will include many elderly and pediatric patients, which will present greater challenges in determining the degree of injury and physiologic status on an ongoing basis. The elderly, for example will have many underlying chronic diseases including uses of medicines that may make accurate triage based on vital signs and simple physical assessment impossible. VCURES discussed the various technologies it is developing to overcome these problems. For more information, please contact Dr. Ward at krward@hsc.vcu.edu.