Diagnoses and factors associated with medical evacuation and return to duty among nonmilitary personnel participating in XXXX in Iraq and Afghanistan.

@entity146 @entity7441 @entity490 @entity85 @entity130
BACKGROUND: Nonmilitary personnel play an increasingly critical role in modern wars. Stark differences exist between the demographic characteristics, training and missions of military and nonmilitary members. We examined the differences in types of injury and rates of returning to duty among nonmilitary and military personnel participating in @entity7441 in Iraq and Afghanistan. METHODS: We collected data for nonmilitary personnel medically evacuated from @entity7441 in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2007. We compared injury categories and return-to-duty rates in this group with previously published data for military personnel and identified factors associated with return to duty. RESULTS: Of the 2155 medically evacuated nonmilitary personnel, 74.7% did not return to duty. War-related @entity130 in this group accounted for 25.6% of the evacuations, the most common causes being combat-related @entity130 (55.4%) and musculoskeletal/spinal @entity130 (22.9%). Among individuals with non-war-related @entity130 , @entity85 accounted for 17.8% of evacuations. Diagnoses associated with the highest return-to-duty rates in the group of nonmilitary personnel were @entity146 diagnoses (15.6%) among those with war-related @entity130 and noncardiac chest or @entity490 (44.0%) among those with non-war-related @entity130 . Compared with military personnel, nonmilitary personnel with war-related @entity130 were less likely to return to duty (4.4% v. 5.9%, p = 0.001) but more likely to return to duty after non-war-related @entity130 (32.5% v. 30.7%, p = 0.001). INTERPRETATION: Compared with military personnel, nonmilitary personnel were more likely to be evacuated with non-war-related @entity130 but more likely to return to duty after such @entity130 . For evacuations because of war-related @entity130 , this trend was reversed.
