Disaster & Field Surgery

Field and disaster surgery requires adaptive techniques and resource-limited improvisation. The session covers austere-environment surgery considerations (SOFA and SOST military models), military trauma lessons applied to civilian disaster (Tactical Combat Casualty Care TCCC framework), disaster surgical response (post-Haiti earthquake, post-Türkiye-Syria), mobile surgical teams (US Army Forward Surgical Team, civilian equivalents), low-resource anaesthesia (ketamine field anaesthesia), and post-conflict reconstructive surgery. Discussion addresses damage-control vs definitive surgery in mass-casualty, telemedicine in disaster surgery, NGOs (MSF, ICRC), training for disaster-deployed surgeons, equity in disaster surgical capacity, and 3D-printing of surgical instruments in austere settings.