The Meaning Of Medvac Explained And Occasions When It May Be Needed

The term medvac is an acronym for medical evacuation

. Medvac usually refers to a team of highly trained medical personnel who respond to emergency situations in order to offer assistance to the injured or ill. The patient is then transported to a hospital or medical care facility. The type of vehicle used to transport the sick or injured patient is an aircraft which is most often either a fixed wing air plane or a helicopter.

Medical evacuation is a very quick and efficient way for military personnel to move wounded soldiers from a battlefield. It is also ideal for transporting, critically injured patients, from the scene of a vehicular accident to a medical facility. The concept of moving patients from one location to another got its start in Australia in the early 1920s as a way to bring doctors to patients and patients to hospitals from the remote wilderness. The concept caught on with the U.S. military during the World War II when field hospitals were being put up just outside the front lines so that wounded soldiers could be flown by helicopter in order to be treated.

All across the UK there are numerous, fully staffed and equipped medvac aircraft in operation. They are being used as air ambulances - arriving on the scenes of terrible car accidents to fly critically injured passengers to hospitals. They are also being used to transport sick patients from one facility to another. If someone happens to fall ill suddenly in a small town or remote area, they often need to been treated quickly by a large well equipped hospital. Often times it would take too long to transport the person by a ground ambulance, so a medical airborne response team would be called in. On board each flight are doctors, nurses and other emergency medical technicians who do all that they can to maintain the health of the person being moved.

Medvac is also used for organ transplant procedures. When someone is awaiting a new organ and one becomes available far from where the sick person is located, a transplant team must arrive quickly to the place that has the organ so that it can be rushed to the ill person who is to receive the transplant. If it were not for these 'flying hospitals' so to speak, time would simply run out as an organ can only be sustained for so many hours once taken out of a human body. Another application medical evacuation teams and equipment are used for is when a premature baby is born in a hospital that is not equipped to care for it. Special incubators are on board the medical aircraft which will keep the baby alive until it is rushed to a hospital that has an adequate neo-natal department.

A countless number of lives have been saved over the past several years thanks to medvac teams. It is estimated that a medical evacuation aircraft leaves the ground every ten minutes somewhere in the UK, rushing off to save and improve the lives of sick and injured people.

by: Lawrence White

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