A Second Hand Conjecture

Joshua brought up this little tid-bit in his last post…

There is also a rather shocking exhibit of an underreported side effect of the war: advances in medical technology now allow survivability after injuries that once were fatal. Which means a new generation of the crippled and maimed are coming home.

There have been “advances” in battlefield medicine in many past wars. So, it shouldn’t be that shocking. And as these advances become mainstream medicine, it improves the field, and our quality of life overall. Also look for improvements in the follow-on care of these soldiers. It isn’t to hard to predict advances in bionics, skin regrowth, and other medicine, as the new members of our “Greatest Generation,” demand more from the VA then a bed in the back ward.

The survivability rate has dramatically improved, with 90% of the wounded being saved.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/06/04/sunday/main1680075.shtml

“You go back to the Revolutionary War and 42 percent of those soldiers who were hit in battle died,” Gawande says. “By World War II, it was under 30 percent who had died from their wounds. And, yet, by the Korean War, Vietnam War and even the Persian Gulf War, it was around 25 percent who died.

“We didn’t make a massive improvement and, yet, in this war we have.”

…

“Shipping them to Landstuhl (in Germany) and then back to the United States, while they’re still critically ill and on ventilators and in need of further surgeries, that — that was unheard of until this war,” says Colonel Craig Shriver, who teaches battlefield surgery at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

To appreciate the speed, consider this: during the Vietnam war, it took 45 days for the wounded to go from battlefield to stateside.

Today, it takes less than four.

…

“I believe that necessity is the mother of invention. And as you would probably agree, war provides many necessities,” says Dr. Larry Loughlin, dean of the Uniformed Services University.

Prior to the Civil War, Loughlin says, “The concept of the hospital as we know it did not exist.”

During World War I, the idea of bringing blood to the battlefield for blood transfusions was introduced. World War II marked the first widespread use of penicillin and after debuting during the Korean war, emergency evacuation helicopters became a common feature of medicine’s battle plan during Vietnam.

Shriver says the correlation between advances in emergency care and war stems from the fact that war is “an intense American experience where really the best minds of health care are all coming together for a cause.”

He adds, “And so we’re putting the best people — a lot of them together on a specific issue — and good things come out of that.”

And what has past wars brought us…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlefield_medicine

* The practice of Triage, by Dominique Jean Larrey during the Napoleonic Wars.
* Advances in surgery – especially amputation, during the Napoleonic Wars and first world war on the battlefield of the Somme.
* The first practical method for transporting blood, by Norman Bethune during the Spanish Civil War.
* Ambulances or dedicated vehicles for the purpose of carrying injured persons.
* The extension of emergency medicine to prehospital settings through the use of emergency medical technicians.
* The establishment of fully equipped and mobile field hospitals such as the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and its successor, the Combat Support Hospital.
* The use of helicopters as ambulances, or MEDEVACs.

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