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Fast action saves Airman’s life

  • Published
  • By Jim Spellman
  • 60TH MEDICAL GROUP PUBLIC AFFAIRS
TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. --  An Airman is recovering from injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident, due in large part to wearing proper personal protection equipment and the fast actions of the emergency room staff at the David Grant USAF Medical Center.

Airman Erin Lukemire, 60th Maintenance Squadron aerial repairman, and his older sister, Sarah, were struck by an automobile on Oliver Road near West Texas Street in Fairfield Aug. 16.

"My sister was knocked unconscious, so I was kind of tending to her," explained Lukemire. "The (Fairfield) police came real fast, really, really fast and they did a police report. They took my sister to a local hospital and I went with her too."

However, it was only hours later, after Airman Lukemire had seen to his sister's medical needs, that his own personal dilemma began to unfold.

"I started to feel real sick in the stomach, like I had a cracked rib or something. At first, I felt fine, all I felt was a road rash," Lukemire explained from his hospital bed. "Then I started feeling this other pain in my side and the middle of my chest, so I had my Mom drive me over to the ER at David Grant."

DGMC's emergency room staff quickly assessed Lukemire's injuries and realized the dire situation the Airman was experiencing.

"I'm very impressed with the care that he got, just the attentiveness of the staff, because they immediately, 'Bam!' brought him in, and within two hours he was in surgery because he had lost a lot of blood," said Ms. Sandy Sweep, mother of Airman Lukemire. "His blood pressure was down, and they were working hard to stabilize him. They were ordering additional units of blood, pumping him full of fluids to get him ready for surgery."

Upstairs on the third floor, a DGMC surgical team prepped for a pre-dawn emergency operation utilizing a relatively new, cutting-edge medical procedure to repair Airman Lukemire's spleen, which had been lacerated in the accident. Historically, this would have required taking the spleen out, but since the 1980s, trauma surgeons have developed many innovative techniques to save an injured spleen.

"Airman Lukemire's spleen was saved by what's called a pledgeted repair, where we sutured a series of felt strips onto the spleen to hold the injury together and stop the bleeding," explained Capt. (Dr.) Brian J. Gavitt, a general surgery resident with the 60th Surgical Operations Squadron. "This sort of 'splenic salvage' procedure only works if the spleen is relatively intact and if the blood supply to the spleen isn't compromised. In those cases, there is universal agreement the spleen would need to be removed rather than repaired."