User:Sirdog/Advanced medical concepts

A cheat sheet relating to ACE medical designed for medic use.

The basic training provided by the Endurance Coalition goes over the ACE medical concepts strictly necessary for the average riflemen to play with the unit comfortably. This page will review certain concepts in more depth for deeper understanding.

Medications

There are 4 medications.

1. Morphine
2. Epinephrine
3. Adenosine
4. Atropine

Morphine reduces blood pressure (BP), reduces heart rate (HR), and suppresses pain. Morphine does not eliminate pain, and pain will return depending on the wound itself and the state of said wound once the morphine wears off (i.e is it bandaged, is it stitched, etc). Morphine generally wears off after 30 real world minutes. Due to morphine's affect on BP and HR, it is generally advised that — unless in a firefight and it's required to engage the enemy — morphine not be injected without a medic's go ahead. The morphine may cause problems with future injuries or treatments.

Epinephrine has a single effect, which is it increases HR. It stays in the player character for 2 real world minutes and reaches maximum effectiveness after roughly 30 real world seconds, raising the beats per minute (BPM) by upwards of 50. It is rarely used for this purpose, however, and tends to be used for it's special effect — it dramatically increases the chance an unconscious player will awaken once stabilized. Because of how high it can raise BPM, however, it should be applied with caution if the unconscious individual's HR is already high.

Adenosine and atropine are rarely used by the Endurance Coalition, but in ACE they are regulatory medications in that they only lower HR. A HR meeting or exceed 200 BPM may result in ACE invoking cardiac arrest, and so a medic with adenosine could use it to stabilize the individual instead of using morphine which would also mess with the patient's BP.

CPR

Checking a patient's pulse while CPR is ongoing will result in a false positive.

A medic may sometimes ask someone else to perform CPR. This is because the effectiveness of CPR is the same regardless of who does it, however, medics are faster at bandaging and can stitch wounds — thus efficiency demands they bandage while a laymen perform CPR. If asked, perform CPR twice in a row, then check heart rate. If there is no heart rate, or it's weak, repeat the cycle until it reads as strong unless told otherwise by the medic. Once it's strong, you may return to the fight unless the medic requests further assistance.

Fluids

ACE medical has 3 fluid variants — plasma, blood, and saline. They all perform the same function, being to raise blood pressure and address blood loss. The variation chosen is preferential to the mission / scenario creator.

Blood loss

A healthy and normal blood level is 6 liters. Severity is based on how many liters of blood have been lost.

• 6 liters is baseline.
• 5 liters is "Lost some blood"
• 4 liters is "Lost a lot of blood"
• 3.6 liters is "Lost a large amount of blood"
• 3 liters is "Lost a fatal amount of blood"

Medics usually have fluids on them in variants of 250, 500, and 1000 milliliters. This means 1000 milliliters is 1 liter. An individual with a stable (not necessarily healthy) blood level is an individual with 5 liters or more. The greater the loss of blood, the more fluids which are required to correct it.

The reason 3 liters is fatal is because, to stabilize, the medic would need to dispense 2000-3000 milliliters of blood into the patient — this would catastrophically effect their carried supply of fluids. So much blood loss also has implications on heart rate and blood pressure, which may result in cardiac arrest, and thus a level of attention from the medic that likely cannot be spared in a war zone.

Bandages

A more detailed chart than is on the cheat sheet comparing wound types against the bandages.

Bandages in ACE have 3 important mechanics at play. The first is their efficiency at bandaging a particular wound (e.g how many of X bandage type is needed for a Y wound type of Z size), the chance the bandage has to re-open at all, and if it does re-open, the delay between the re-opening being triggered and blood loss resuming.

• Field Dressing is the average joe of the bandage types. Not awesome, but not horrible.
• Packaging Bandages are more likely to re-open, but the delay before blood loss resumes is higher than a Field Dressing.
• Elastic Bandages will close any wound of any size on first application, but it's chance to re-open is super high and the delay before blood loss resumes is super low.
• QuikClots take almost double or more to be consumed to cover a Y wound of Z size than the other 3 types, but it's chance to re-open is super low and the delay before blood loss resumes is super high.

Elastics are favored by medics because the 2 major downsides — the high re-open chance and low blood loss delay — are entirely negated by the fact medics will stitch the wounds they close, which makes them unable to ever re-open. So, the fact they work quickly and will always fully resolve any Y wound type of Z size works tremendously to their benefit.

QuikClots are favored for smaller wounds since they are more likely to fully resolve it. This is also why basic training advises using Field Dressings and Packaging Bandages on wounds of Medium+ size before falling back on them for Smalls, since ACE applies bandages in order of largest wound to smallest wound. This helps reduce wastage of bandages which may save your life or someone else's life.

Wounds

ACE has 8 wound types.

Wound	Pain Level	Bleed Rate	Description
Abrasion	Light	Slow	Skin rubbed on rough surface.
Avulsion	High	Fast	Entire or partial external structure removed.
Contusion (Bruise)	Light	None	Internal structure traumatized without breaking skin
Crush	Light	Slow	Self-explanatory.
Cut	Light	Proportional to wound size	Slice wound with even edges.
Laceration	Light	Slow/Medium (wound size a factor)	Separating wound with ragged edges.
Velocity	High	Medium (wound size a factor)	Object enters body at high speed (e.g bullet).
Puncture	Light	Slow	Sharp object enters body (e.g knife).

References

• DiscountNinja. “The Definitive Arma 3 ACE Medical Guide” Golden Legion. Accessed April 12, 2025. https://golden-legion.com/the-definitive-arma-3-ace-medical-guide.
• NOID and FindingNima. “ACE3 Adv Medical + Cheat Sheet” Steam Community. Accessed April 12, 2025. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=930706887.
• Lynx. “ACE3 Advanced Medical” Steam Community. Accessed April 12, 2025. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2172390846.
• Fleff. "13th CORPS FIELD MANUAL - BASIC TRAINING (0.1)" Endurance Coalition. Accessed April 12, 2025. File:Fleff_EDC_ArmaIII_Basic_Training.pdf