Before finishing the second stage, the Vuelta’s medical director called the mobile medical unit that always waits at the finish lines, where the Comitas workers are. “Dylan Van Baarle, number 8 of the Visma team. A fall on his side…” he began to say. Enough for the team of doctors to start the protocol. Or, what is the same, to activate the radiodiagnostic equipment (X-rays) while waiting for the arrival of the rider. Five minutes later, with the images, the Visma team doctor, the Vuelta’s medical director and the doctors who were connected via satellite (or internet, depending on how remote the place is) understood that the cyclist could not continue in the race, that he had microcracks in the pelvis that prevented him from fully mobilizing. He was the first patient and diagnosis of this Vuelta – last year more than 80 x-rays were done on some 55 patients – a help that the peloton appreciates, because with them at the finish line they do not have to go to any hospital, a real nuisance depending on where the stage ends, sometimes at the top of a cliff. Yesterday, however, two more were added, as Rigoberto Urán (EF) – who retired from the race – and Andreass Kron (Lotto) also went through boxes.
The Comitas service was born in 1996 as a response to a need of the Armed Forces, since sometimes the soldiers were at sea, in the desert or in isolated areas, so having a hospital piggyback It was a relief. Thus, in that year, they started to support the EMET Army deployed in Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) in peacekeeping operations. Direct communication with the doctors, as it happens now, was with the Gómez Ulloa Central University Military Hospital in Madrid. It was only a matter of time before the service was expanded to ships, universities, nursing homes, remote towns and penitentiaries. Also, since the previous year, to the Vuelta.
Sometimes it is not easy to get the car to the top of the mountain passes, a task for the driving specialist Félix García. Always by his side is María Expósito, the unit’s technician, as well as Julián Cesteros, head of business development, and the salesmen Ignacio Martínez and Pablo Antuña, who are usually at the start of the stages to explain the briefcase they use in case they have to work away from the truck. “It is like the mobile unit but it does not have X-rays,” says Cesteros; “satellite communication, charging batteries, an exploration camera for the larynx, a screen for videoconferencing with the doctor, a vital signs monitor (blood saturation, oxygen, electrocardiogram, blood pressure…), an Iriscope for the eye, a stethoscope, an ultrasound probe, an otoscope (ears) and a dermatoscope (skin).”
In any case, the mobile unit also has a changing table, a bathroom, a professional operating table, air conditioning… And it is for all those who need it, because although only three cyclists in the peloton have used it so far, they have treated a boy from the organisation who fell off his motorbike, a worker who caught his hand in a crane… “The X-ray service provided by Comitas adds a fundamental diagnostic capacity,” admits the director of the Vuelta, Javier Guillén; “unfortunately, falls occur in a cycling event and being able to take an X-ray image in the race environment gives the teams the ability to identify bone injuries of any kind, without the riders having to travel to nearby hospitals.” Cutting-edge military technology for the peloton.
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