The U.S. Army Institute Surgical Research Burn Center at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston, Texas, hosted four burn care specialists from North Atlantic Treaty Organization Science and Technology Organization May 20-21 to discuss and develop clinical practice guidelines for care of NATO military burn patients.

The two-day STO Lecture Series called HFM-246 organized by the Human Factors and Medicine Panel focused on the development of evidence-based clinical practice guidelines for the management of severely burned patients during armed conflicts.

USAISR Burn Center Acting Director, Lt. Col. (Dr.) Wylan Peterson coordinated the event and hosted the burn care specialists from Belgium, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Col. (Dr.) Serge Jennes from the Burn Wound Center Military Hospital in Brussels, Belgium, was the lecture series director.

"This NATO group (Czech Republic, U.S., Germany, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Great Britain, the Netherlands, France and Belgium) was created in 2009 and includes a multi-national group of experts in burn wounds," said Jennes. "Our goal at this lecture series was to develop a consensus about the clinical practice guidelines for all NATO countries that takes into account the experiences of all the countries involved in the last conflicts."

Jennes added that the consensus will be provided to the Science and Technology Organization in Paris in 2016 and hopes to have the report published in an international journal. The goal of this group is to develop a series of clinical guidelines for combat casualty care that reflects best-practice among the NATO collaborators, much like the USAISR Joint Trauma System clinical practice guidelines repository.

The NATO STO is designed to conduct and promote collaborative research and the exchange of information between NATO countries. It is comprised of three organizations: the Science and Technology Board; the Panels and the Technical Teams; and the HFM, one of seven panels under the STB.