The alpine and speleo doctors
There are more than 700 doctors and nurses today belonging to the CNSAS. Bringing health aid in a hostile environment is the main mission of the Corpo Nazionale Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico and the thousands of rescue operations conducted every year on the national territory cannot be separated from the enthusiasm, the time and the professionalism that the entire health component of the CNSAS deploys every day.
On the territory there are regional medical managers, a National Medical Commission and two Schools, an Alpine and a Speleo one, working in synergy to train doctors and nurses and technicians laic from the health point of view, according to their specific skills.
The history of the Corpo Nazionale del Soccorso Alpino e Speleologico features among its founders and inspirers dr. Scipio Stenico, who was also one of the founders of CISA/IKAR, the international organization which collects all the Alpine Rescue organizations of the various countries of the world. The presence and the strong activity of many doctors (very often they were doctors coming from the valleys who were joined only later, as the organization grew, by many more colleagues) allowed for the development of a rescue that, very often ahead of its time, permitted to reach the injured person and give first aid. Then the medical backpacks were born, the stretchers and solutions to the problems that the management of an injured in those environments presents are found.
Every year the Schools organize ECM accredited courses, both basic and advanced, on different topics of emergency medicine and emergency in mountain, underground and canyon, evaluating materials in use and planning or studying solutions to the different problems that these environments and long time-intervals (when the helicopter does not fly) impose on both injured people and rescuers.
The task of Scuola Nazionale Medici Emergenza ad alto rischio in ambiente ipogeo (Snamed) is to standardize the knowledge and management of the injured person in the underground environment or in resurgence among the entire speleo and underwater speleo health personnel. The reference guidelines are the international ones related to trauma, indeed all the staff has successfully concluded the PHTLS courses. These guidelines must be integrated taking into account the specificity of the environment in which it operates (temperature, humidity, difficulty in progression) and the characteristics of the rescued person (time between the accident and the arrival of the rescue team, need to unravel sections of the cave to allow recovery in safety): factors that frustrate the concept of golden hour and open scenarios of different trauma treatment.
NATIONAL MEDICAL ALPINE SCHOOL
Director: MARIO MILANI
Deputy Director: GLORIA BRIGHENTI
NATIONAL MEDICAL HIGH-RISK EMERGENCY IN UNDERGROUND ENVIRONMENT SCHOOL (Snamed)
Director: LUCA PILO
Deputy Director: LIVIO RUSSO