ivAcknowledgements
The editorial staff and contributors wish to acknowledge their gratitude to Congressman Randy Cunningham for
his support of Special Operations Forces (SOF) and the Clinical Assessment Recording Environment (C.A.R.E.)
program through which this medical handbook is co-developed. We further wish to acknowledge the important
contributions of the United States Special Operations Command, Office of the Command Surgeon, for inspiring
this work, and most importantly for allowing their medics to participate in the production and editing of this
publication from start to finish.
We are profoundly grateful for the time and effort put forth by the authors of the Special Operations Forces
Medical Handbook. We recognize with heartfelt appreciation the time sacrificed from busy schedules, families
and friends in order to meet this requirement. Though the rules of engagement were stringent, and the template
a struggle, the perseverance demonstrated is embodied within these pages.
A special debt of gratitude is extended to the United States Army Medical Research and Material Command
(USAMRMC) and the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) for providing the
opportunity and challenge to develop a comprehensive military medical work to meet the needs of an elite
group, the SOF Medics. We look forward to the future challenges of integrating this work with the Systematized
Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) architecture.
We appreciate Technical and Management Services Corporation (TAMSCO) for providing excellent program
management support and Point Loma Industries, Inc. for pioneering the medical system software interface for
the digital version of this work.
A host of other individuals have our deepest gratitude, but we need to acknowledge the Geneva Foundation
for providing a non-profit organization and cooperation of the publisher, Teton New Media, for their assistance
in building a renewable resource that will hopefully continue providing the most effective and comprehensive
medical information for the SOF medical community.
Colonel Warren L. Whitlock
Chief Editor
Center for Total Access
Southeast Regional Medical Command (SERMC)