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The emergency transport Dr. Huey McDaniel flew from Iraq on Jan. 29, 2006, made headlines for his patients’ fame. But for McDaniel, it stands out for a different reason — the opportunity he had to later share lunch with those patients and mark their recovery.

McDaniel met ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff and cameraman Doug Vogt in December while in New York for a conference, reuniting for the first time since he’d helped sustain their lives during the flight from Balad to Germany. The imbedded journalists had recovered from serious injuries sustained when their convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device some 12 miles north of Baghdad.

“After having seen so many young people and never had any follow up as to what happened to them, it was nice to be able to see them recovered to that level,” said McDaniel, who served in Iraq from January to March 2006.

Those three months of service, capped by the birth of his son shortly after his return, whetted his appetite for further work as a flight surgeon. Meanwhile, though, he’s happy to be home.

“I want to get back out and do more work with the Air Force,” he said. “But I would like to delay that happening for a year and a half or so. I want to see my son get a little bigger.”

Settling back in the South with his wife, Helen, and their 17-month-old son, Cameron, has been a welcome change for McDaniel. He joined the University of Mississippi Medical Center in October 2006 as a clinical assistant professor of surgery. Before that, he spent the prior four years in the Reno-Tahoe area of Nevada, where he served as a clinical instructor with the University of Nevada School of Medicine and on the staff of Reno VA Medical Center, among other institutions.

The move south was a chance to be closer to family both for McDaniel, who has relatives in Mobile and Birmingham, Ala., and Helen, whose family is from the Gulf Coast. She has since opened The Pilates Studio in Ridgeland.

“Moving here, we didn’t suffer any culture shock; rather, it was like coming home,” McDaniel said. “I’ve lived out west, in the north and in the northeast, but I think Mississippi is absolutely beautiful. It’s a wonderful place to live, from the morals of the people here to how friendly everyone is.”

Being in Mississippi has allowed McDaniel to build upon the three branches of his career — as a vascular surgeon at UMC, as a reserve officer and tactical medical physician for the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department, and as a flight surgeon based at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi.

His work at UMC includes clinical and surgical duties at the G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery VA Medical Center, which he shares with Drs. Marc Mitchell and Fred Rushton.

Whereas McDaniel’s interest in the past has focused on aortic surgery, his current position has offered the opportunity to delve into emerging endovascular therapies like percutaneous atherectomy as an alternative to bypass surgery. He’s also been working in vascular trauma, including embolizations for traumatic injuries.

“That’s not a common thing for vascular surgeons to be involved in,” he pointed out. “It’s exciting to be part of a bigger academic setting, and to be able to do some of the cutting-edge work that Marc Mitchell wanted to do here.”

In addition to his daily work and trauma calls at the hospital, McDaniel trains about twice a month with the Hinds County Sheriff’s Department Special Response Team. The 18-officer contingent is charged with the most challenging calls, from high-risk search warrants to hostage rescues.

McDaniel’s regular training with the team includes practice scenarios, shooting drills, officer-down drills and extractions. While the team has had tactical medics by its side in the past, their highest level of training has been that of a paramedic, said Capt. Ken Magee, special response team commander.

“Having someone on board who has the tactical training as well as medical training has greatly enhanced our capabilities and the level of care we can provide now for our own officers and anyone else who is injured,” he said.

For his part, McDaniel would like to stir up interest among other physicians in the area to go through reserve-officer training and get involved with local law enforcement.

The work of tactical medical support serving law-enforcement officers is closely akin to flight-surgeon work serving military personnel, McDaniel said. As a member of the U.S. Air Force Reserves, he trained in delivering field-based medical care shortly after completing his vascular surgery fellowship in 2002 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He also trained as a flight surgeon and in critical-care transport — making him well-suited to the task in Iraq.

“In the old days, you had the huge in-theater hospitals where people got their care and went through recovery until they were well enough to fly out,” he said. “You had to be in pretty good shape to fly — but that’s not how we do it today.”

Among the challenges to sustaining critical patients at 35,000 feet are the pressure changes that affect air — for example, inside an IV tubing or trapped in an injured person’s head or abdomen. Not to mention the communication challenges when working in an 85-decible environment, or the threat of surface-to-air missiles cutting your trip short.

“There are a lot of things involved in transporting a critically ill patient from the theater back to Germany,” McDaniel said.

Working with a trusted flight nurse and cardio-pulmonary technician, McDaniel made hundreds of the six- to eight-hour flights between the LSA Anaconda Air Force Theater Hospital in Balad and Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. His deployment also included work as a field combat surgeon, operating to a limited extent at the theater hospital.

“It was frustrating not having all the equipment you want to have in the field, and not having a clinic to provide follow-up care to the number of Iraqis being treated at the theater hospital,” he said. “But I think there is nobody in the world who does casualty evacuations better than the Army and Air Force combined. It’s amazing if you’ve never been in the military to see that giant machine in action.”



September 2007

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