Military doctors reports that today's miniaturized medical technology is having a huge impact on the rate of battlefield deaths, according to Wired News.
In the old days, injured soldiers had to wait for all but the most basic care until they got to stand-alone surgical hospitals. Now, troops can quickly set up mini hospitals, complete with intensive-care units and operating "rooms," in a flash.The equipment is "reduced in size and weight enough that a handful of people can carry it all inside a few Humvees, set it all up within an hour and have all the equipment for (the) first two operations inside of five backpacks," said surgeon Dr. Atul Gawande....
Among other things, military doctors have turned to miniature versions of blood-testing, ultrasound and oxygen machines, which often occupy large chunks of space in U.S. hospitals. Ventilators have been shrunk, too.
But while the smaller medical devices work "very well," their purpose is ultimately limited in the mini hospitals, [Dr. George] Peoples said. "Our goal is not to be doing definitive, state-of-the-art surgery. It's literally lifesaving surgery. That's one of the lessons we've learned over the last decade, the idea of what we call damage-control surgery: You're not trying to fix everything the first time you see the patient. You stop hemorrhaging, stop infection."
This is a major advance over prior conflicts, even those as recent as the 1991 Gulf War. Nevertheless, one outcome is more wounded warriors, many with grevious injuries for a lifetime. The price of freedom is still very, very high.
Related:
• New England Journal of Medicine - Casualties of War — Military Care for the Wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan.
• DoD - U.S. Casualty Status (pdf)