Guthrie's Urotrauma Amendment Passes House

Press Release

An amendment sponsored by Congressman Brett Guthrie (KY-02) to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 passed the House of Representatives on Thursday evening. The full bill passed the House today.

The amendment would require the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to create a comprehensive policy for treating service members suffering from urotrauma wounds. Urotrauma includes injuries to the kidneys, reproductive organs, and urinary organs. These injuries are now among the most common and debilitating kinds suffered by our troops from IED blasts.

The amendment also mirrors legislation introduced by Congressman Guthrie in March. H.R. 984 would establish an inter-agency task force to study improvements to care service members with urotrauma now and across their lifetimes. Most recently, this legislation received a hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee on May 21, 2013.

"This amendment is a critical step to improving care for some of our most gravely injured troops," said Congressman Guthrie. "The military has excellent medical resources for urotrauma patients, but after two years of outreach to military and civilian doctors, it's become clear to me that there is much room for improvement. We can't continue to allow preventable lapses in care to erode our service members' recovery."

"This is a huge issue for our military men and women. These are deeply private injuries and we can't let our fighting men and women down when it comes to recovering from them," added Congressman Guthrie.

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