APRA HARBOR, Guam\u2014A diver suffering from severe decompression sickness was successfully airlifted from Chuuk Atoll to Guam by the Coast Guard on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Watchstanders at Coast Guard Sector Guam received a medevac request Monday from Chuuk State Hospital for a 51-year-old American male suffering from severe decompression sickness. A Coast Guard flight surgeon, a naval dive medical officer and the patient\u2019s attending physician consulted and recommended a medevac as the hyperbaric chamber in Chuuk was inoperable.<\/p>\n
Two HC-130 Hercules crews launched from Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point Tuesday evening with a three-person medical team from Kalawao Rescue. Kalawao Rescue is a Hawaii-based disaster medical team that provides initial and follow-on medical response to major emergencies and disasters.<\/p>\n
The airplane landed in Kwajelain Tuesday night to swap crews and refuel before continuing to Chuuk. The patient was then safely flown to Guam Memorial Hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n
The aircrew flew more than 4,000 miles from Hawaii to Guam to complete the medevac. This is comparable to dispatching an ambulance from Miami to respond to a patient in Anchorage. The 14th Coast Guard District encompasses more than 12.2 million square miles of the Central and South Pacific. The HC-130, the primary means of conducting long range missions, is scheduled to be replaced by the HC-130J, which will bring increased speed, range and capability to the Coast Guard mission in the Pacific. (USCG)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" APRA HARBOR, Guam\u2014A diver suffering from severe decompression sickness was successfully airlifted from Chuuk Atoll…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[51,754,906],"class_list":["post-36499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-guam","tag-miami","tag-south-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}