Patient Transfer Unit: Clinical Experience On Medical Evacuation In North-East

Patient Transport unit (PTU) and its team CCATT (Critical Care Air transport Team) has been operating as a savior of north-east since 2008. It is an indigenously developed, stretcher modified unit. It houses the essential critical monitoring and electromedical life support electromedical equipment. The inhospitable terrain of north-eastern sector coupled with ‘the need for speed' makes aeromedical retrievals (MEDEVAC) an essential and very often the only choice. There has been a significant number of MEDEVAC using this equipment and the experience gained over the year has caused several modifications in its basic design as well as opened a chapter for light weight mobile PTU i.e. Backpack PTU. There has been issues pertaining to its use in terms of criticality of patient, hours of its use on long term flying, on board interventions, communication related events, operational and administrative support. To utilize it judicially and gainfully it was proposed to study all the related aspects and formulate a severity screening scoring system so that the indenting, administrative and delivering units are on same platform.