News From the Cause
Face of Defense: Doctor Employs Skills in Afghanistan (DoD News)
August 05, 2011
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan, Aug. 4, 2011 – Many wounded airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines in Afghanistan have suffered injuries that have changed their lives forever, but one doctor at the Craig Joint Theater Hospital here has made it his mission to support those who need it most.
Air Force Lt. Col. (Dr.) Carlos Ayala, chief of ear, nose and throat facial plastic surgery with the 455th Expeditionary Medical Group here, is the only ENT surgeon who specializes as a facial plastic surgeon in Afghanistan.
"My role here is to provide care to local nationals, Afghan National Police and our U.S. service members who have been injured in battle," he said. "I deal with their facial injuries, fractures, and all types of head and neck trauma using my training in aesthetics and reconstruction to allow people to go home as normal as possible."
Ayala, who is deployed from Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., arrived here in mid-May. He has seen more than 100 patients and performed more than 200 surgeries.
"This is by far the busiest I've ever been in the military. … There's nothing like this," Ayala said. "The type of trauma we see here doesn't exist stateside."
Often, bomb blast survivors arrive with multiple fragment and soft-tissue injuries to the face, he said. Ayala and his team work to remove the fragments that would cause long-term scarring if they remained embedded in the patient's tissue, and they repair soft-tissue injuries to restore their facial appearance.
Being the only facial plastic surgeon in Afghanistan, Ayala has seen a multitude of injuries in a relatively short period of time. Some, he added, are so unusual and devastating that no textbooks can show him how to fix them. The only thing to do then, he said, is to fall back on his training.
"After I arrived, I helped a little Afghan girl with diabetes [who] was intubated for a lengthy period of time," Ayala said. "Her voice box closed up, and she would have been dependent on a breathing tube the rest of her life had I not had the necessary training and been able to save her." Click here to view more
