Doctors on U.S. Navy ship in Haiti operate on 2010 earthquake victim

A medical team assigned to the Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort recently performed its first mobile interventional radiology (IR) procedure at a medical site established at the Admiral Killick Coast Guard Station as part of Continuing Promise 2015 (CP-15) in Port au Prince, Haiti.

Lt. Cmdr. Chad Baarson, an interventional radiologist assigned to the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth, Virginia, said he received a 17-year-old patient whose pelvis had been crushed during the 2010 earthquake, which devastated the nation.

"Her doctor in town was unable to help her, so he sent her to us," Baarson said. "It would have been an easy fix had we brought her on the ship, but we had already completed our surgical screenings for Haiti."

Baarson said he had used the IR suite aboard Comfort to perform routine surgeries on patients who were able to visit the ship. Baarson said the patient was in pain due to an infected bladder, so he selected Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Michael Sien to assist him.

"We had never mobilized an IR procedure before, but it was the only way to provide the relief the patient needed in a timely manner," Sien said.