Introduction and Objectives:

Strategic evacuations for medical causes are those that are carried out when the casualty cannot be recovered for the mission and is transported to national territory. The objective of this study is to describe the Spanish casualties strategically evacuated due to cardiovascular causes, as well as to describe the Spanish military personnel who died due to cardiac causes in the area of operations.

Material and methods:

Retrospective cross-sectional study in which all Spanish military personnel evacuated for medical reasons from the area of operations to the Central Defense Hospital “Gómez Ulla” (Role 4) during the years 2007 and 2020 were included.

Results:

Thirty-six casualties were evacuated on Spanish Role 4 due to cardiovascular causes, of which 25% were diagnosed with atrial fibrillation, 22,2% with myocardial infarction, 11,1% with acute venous thrombosis, and 5.5% of hypertensive crisis, atrial flutter, and atrioventricular block, respectively. The area of operations from where the most evacuations originated was Afghanistan (31%), followed by Lebanon (28%) and international navigations (14%). A total of 13 Spanish soldiers have died in the area of operations for cardiovascular reasons.

Conclusions:

Atrial fibrillation and acute coronary syndrome have been the main diagnoses among the casualties evacuated for cardiovascular reasons. The authors consider it essential that the Spanish Armed Forces have a Role 4 - Cardiology department that, in addition to performing care tasks, serves as a unit for medical examination prior deployment and take part into the medical support for international military operations.