LANDSTUHL, Germany — Flying sick and injured American troops from Ramstein Air Base to the States has become routine after 12 years of war, but the evacuation of a military spouse last week was different: it was the first trans-Atlantic flight of an adult patient hooked to an external lung, Air Force medical personnel said. The patient, the wife of a U.S. soldier stationed in Germany, may require a lung transplant, which medical personnel said would likely be easier to arrange in the U.S. Her evacuation, according to her medical team, was the longest ever of a patient on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation – or ECMO – a therapy that a handful of military medical personnel have spent more...
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