Dr. Bryan Curtis, second from left, an Air Force colonel and chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery for the 60th Surgical Operations Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, Calif., poses with his Athena team at Yokota Air Base, Japan, April 12, 2024. (Jeremy Stillwagner/Stars and Stripes)
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Nearly three dozen patients were treated through a program that brought a plastic surgeon to this airlift hub in western Tokyo for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Athena program sends volunteer Air Force plastic surgeons to overseas bases on a more-or-less regular schedule, sometimes twice a year.
After being screened, patients from bases across Japan began arriving at Yokota the first week of April for appointments with Dr. Bryan Curtis, an Air Force colonel and chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery for the 60th Surgical Operations Squadron at Travis Air Force Base, Calif.
“To allow these services to occur here, in a home location for a patient, relieves a lot of burden and a lot of stress,” he told Stars and Stripes at the 374th Medical Group on Friday. “Surgery in and of itself is a stressful time for patients, so anything we can do to alleviate that stress is beneficial.”
One patient, Erika Mulhall, an Air Force spouse, traveled from Misawa Air Base in northeastern Japan for an umbilicoplasty, a procedure that changes a belly button’s appearance.
Coincidentally, Mulhall had consulted with Curtis at Travis more than a year ago but held off at the time because of her family’s pending move to Japan.
Her primary care provider at Misawa referred her to Athena’s upcoming visit to Yokota; Mulhall applied and learned three months later she’d been accepted.
“I felt really relieved, but it also felt very unreal, because it had been such a long time and it had been such a long process to get my surgery,” she said Friday at the medical group.
Any Tricare beneficiary in Japan can apply for an Athena appointment. The military health care plan for service members, retirees and their families will cover plastic surgeries that address an issue caused by birth defects or physical trauma.
Cosmetic surgeries such as breast augmentations, rhinoplasties and liposuction are not covered by Tricare and must be paid for out of pocket.
For example, breast reconstruction for a service member who had a mastectomy due to cancer is covered. Rhinoplasty for someone unhappy with the shape of their nose is not.
Curtis was Yokota’s general surgeon when the first Athena mission visited the base in the 2000s.
Yokota has not participated in the program in many years due to COVID-19 and general lack of interest, Maj. Christopher Ng, the medical group’s current general surgeon, said in an email April 10.
The response to Athena’s return this month indicated something of a backlog.
“We’ve seen patients from five different bases and completed 33 procedures so far,” Ng said Friday, the final day of the two-week program.
Ng said he would like to bring a plastic surgeon to Yokota through the Athena program as often “as the mission allows.”
“We have to support our local community,” he said. “We have to arrange things with our command, and our ultimate objective is to meet the needs of the Air Force. If the Air Force needs us to support the community in this way, this is what we’ll do.”
