The presentation, including a talk by Dr. Pierre Pelletier, will show the efforts of U.S. and coalition medical teams operating in the country as they care for coalition forces, as well as Afghan military personnel and many civilians.
"I was gone for about eight months and my colleague, Steve Ferrar, and I crossed each others' paths," Boucher told AuntMinnie.com. "We were the first radiologists out there, and ... it was a pretty grueling experience."
Every day the imaging team would witness "the worst injuries produced in any war," he said. "They are the most horrifying injuries you'll ever see in your life -- double, triple amputees."
For getting the injured personnel scanned and off to surgery, CT was the mainstay modality, Boucher said. "It was truly a trauma situation, so everybody got CT, and whenever it went down we were in dire straits," he said. A second CT scanner was installed in 2009, he said, and the redundancy has made all the difference.
"We scanned everybody head to toe, and for those who died we used virtual autopsy," Boucher said.
Fortunately, the trauma cases were interspersed with patients presenting with routine nonwar maladies such as appendicitis and urolithiasis, said Boucher, who promises attendees a presentation like no other.
"Advanced medical care with radiology at the battlefront has fundamentally altered healthcare delivery in war, saving life and limb," he said.
