Military Medicine Implements In-home Virtual Health in Europe.

OBJECTIVE: This report outlines a multispecialty implementation effort which included 12 specialty practices and 28 clinicians within Regional Health Command Europe (RHCE) and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC) to pilot an in-home virtual health (VH) program using existing resources. METHODS AND MATERIALS: Synchronous VH encounters were performed using an Acano desktop conferencing client (Cisco Systems, Inc, San Jose, CA) and a USB web camera at the provider (distant) site and the patient's own computer or device in the home. A web real-time conferencing (Web RTC) server provided the connections. RESULTS: Between October 2016 and May 2018, 310 synchronous VH appointments to patients' homes in 23 geographic locations in 9 countries on 3 different continents were completed; 28 skill type I and II specialty providers at LRMC, SHAPE Belgium Army Health Clinic (AHC), and Vilseck AHC, Germany Primary Care Clinic participated. The providers represented 9 distinct specialties and primary care. Appointment types were as follows: 85 (39%) follow-up type appointments; 70 (32%) group type appointments; 65 (30%) initial specialty care appointments. The 3 most active clinics were Pediatric Gastroenterology with 88 (28%), the Nutrition Clinic with 82 (26%), and the Traumatic Brain Injury Clinic with 63 (20%) encounters. Full audio and video connectivity rate was 97%, excluding reconnects after dropped calls which occasionally occurred. Patient satisfaction scores were high 16/17 (94%) with 5% of patients surveyed. CONCLUSION: Low complexity synchronous VH appointments were successfully accomplished across a broad spectrum of health care services and appointment types. Landstuhl RMC specialists received consults from sites across a vast geographic area including Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. An in-home VH option gives providers a special tool to extend services far beyond traditional boundaries. This pilot project helped RHCE and LRMC providers gain valuable experience extending care to the home and will provide foundational knowledge for future VH efforts targeting groups and outcomes.

Visual Dysfunctions at Different Stages after Blast and Non-blast Mild Traumatic Brain Injury.

PURPOSE: To assess the prevalence of visual dysfunctions and associated symptoms in war fighters at different stages after non-blast- or blast-induced mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). METHODS: A comprehensive retrospective review of the electronic health records of 500 U.S. military personnel with a diagnosis of deployment-related mTBI who received eye care at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. For analysis, the data were grouped by mechanism of injury, and each group was further divided in three subgroups based on the number of days between injury and initial eye examination. RESULTS: The data showed a high frequency of visual symptoms and visual dysfunctions. However, the prevalence of visual symptoms and visual dysfunctions did not differ significantly between mechanism of injury and postinjury stage, except for eye pain and diplopia. Among visual symptoms, binocular dysfunctions were more common, including higher near vertical phoria, reduced negative fusional vergence break at near, receded near point of convergence, decreased stereoacuity, and reduced positive relative accommodation. CONCLUSIONS: The lack of difference in terms of visual sequelae between subgroups (blast vs. nonblast) suggests that research addressing the assessment and management of mTBI visual sequelae resulting from civilian nonblast events is relevant to military personnel where combat injury results primarily from a blast event.