How Does Star Trek Medicine Compare to Today’s Medical Advances?

Apart from becoming the most iconic franchise in television history, Star Trek – from “The Original Series” through “Enterprise” – fired the imaginations of inventors, scientists, astronauts and those who just had a desire to see its advanced technologies become reality.

Perhaps not surprisingly, that is occurring far more often than Gene Roddenberry and his successors predicted. The perennial flip-phone resembles Captain Kirk’s hand-held communicator, for instance, and the Internet is humanity’s first Memory Alpha. But a few of the most interesting transitions from science fiction to fact are happening in medicine.

The senior medical officers of today believe a rudimentary version of Dr. “Bones” McCoy’s medical tricorder will be used by the US military. Not someday. Not in a couple of decades. But soon. Possibly even before the end of this decade.

in fact, the US Army is already beginning to field the first parts of its new Land Warrior battle ensemble, which will upgrade the field soldier from just being a cog in the gears of combat to a central and primary element of a new system-of-systems type approach. The success of this effort up till now is essential to medicine as the continuing research and development (R&D) side of this ceaseless process – Future Force Warrior (FFW) – is examining some important advances apart from protecting soldiers from injury, but in caring for them should they be wounded.

US military casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq already hold the record for the fewest “killed in action” (those who die in combat before they can be treated) of any conflict in the history of warfare. That is largely down to two factors: Advanced body armor that has practically eliminated head and torso wounds and superior medical intervention on the battlefield. That ranges from medics (and Navy corpsmen) who are far better trained and equipped than their predecessors, to surgeons who were placed at the front during the initial combat phase.

Therefore, the so-called “golden hour” has turned into what one Army surgeon calls the “platinum 10 minutes” – the time from the moment a soldier becomes a casualty until he (or she) receives life-saving medical care.

Continuing breakthroughs are aimed at extending the armor to protect arms and legs – the primary locations of injuries, mostly from fragmentation and explosions, among US military personnel today. Ultimately, should the final quirks be ironed out, would be the Future Force Warrior prototype, which just about everyone compares with the full-body armor worn by Star Wars imperial troopers.

Much closer to reality are other FFW components that perhaps could become integral to standard military kit in the coming years. For example, systems that constantly monitor a soldier’s vital signs, fluid intake, even sleep, making that information instantly (and wirelessly) available to any medic. It may even send out a radio call to the closest medic should those vital signs indicate a soldier has received a injury.

Such a development may not be a hand-held tricorder, but it’s getting there.

Military personnel will also be wearing electronic dog tags that contain their entire (updated regularly) medical histories, making it possible to tailor any medical treatment, taking account of allergies, how different drugs interact or other medical conditions or recent treatments. That may also include updates at each stage of care along the line of evacuation from where the soldier was wounded all the way back to a hospital in the US.

Every soldier, airman, sailor and Marine also will be issued a personal first aid kit containing, among other items, a single-handed tourniquet and special blood-clotting bandages to stop bleeding (rapid blood loss remains the number one why soldiers die on the battlefield). Each also will be trained in advanced first aid – and one in six (at least) will be trained as a Combat Life Saver (CLS). While it receives a non-medical rating, the Combat Life Saver will provide assistance, as required, to regular medics, as well as adding one new layer of on-site support to his or her fellow military personnel.

Medics and corpsmen are also receiving significant upgrades in both equipment and training. With the addition of a constant stream – and history – of data from every soldier and the capability to “reach back”, with both audio and video, to greater levels of medical expertise, from the Forward Surgical Team operating close to front-line gunfire to top-notch specialists in the US, the Future Warrior Medic will be able to give an unprecedented level of medical care within minutes of a soldier being injured.

A few of these elements are already in place in Southwest Asia; most will be used within a few months. Others coming along include:

A testing kit using biomarkers to determine the presence and severity of brain injuries

Automatic controls built into ventilators, allowing medics to deliver a level of resuscitation currently only available from intensive-care nurses

Hand-held ultrasounds to pinpoint internal injuries

A digital handbook of diagnostic and treatment protocols medics can carry into combat

Turning ordinary air into medical-grade oxygen with small portable oxygen generators

A system that can quickly identify and diagnose 10 biologic weapons threats, including anthrax, smallpox and plague

Ways to provide replacement blood without the need for whole blood bags that must be refrigerated

An advanced, self-contained training simulator for medics (not a holodeck, but also getting there)

While these breakthroughs are targeted at providing quick, effective medical treatment to war fighters, they too will become an integral part of the medical resources US forces will be able to provide to civilians and enemy combatants.

Before the current conflict, US military medicine was not intended to care for the elderly, children or illnesses and diseases not found among the young, physically fit members of the armed forces. Today – and to an even bigger extent in the future – such care is part of the training and equipment the Air Force, Army and Navy will bring into combat and to disaster relief and humanitarian missions, also.

Before some of those in uniform today retire, future military and civilian research and development may even go beyond what the doctors of Star Trek could achieve. Lt. Gen. Kevin C. Kiley, the Surgeon General of the Army, has written that he thinks one of the “most exciting possibilities in modern medicine” to be the ability to repair or re-grow lost or damaged tissues and limbs. “Regenerative medicine”, Kiley says, is the subject of promising research that he feels “has implications for military medicine in the near future”.

McCoy’s sickbay on the Enterprise was set in the 23rd Century, some 200 years hence. It may well be, though, that “Bones” would find himself old-fashioned and outdated in the midst of 21st Century combat medicine. We can only dream of the advances to come in the next 50-100 years, let alone the next 200!

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