June 10,2008:
As was the case during earlier
wars, the fighting in Iraq has led to advances in emergency room medical
techniques. This is because in wartime, you get more of the very severe
injuries that are much more rare in civilian hospitals. Because not all
emergency room teams treat the same injury exactly the same way, it's possible
to discover better techniques are superior, because of these variations in
treatment. This time around, nearly all medical records are stored
electronically, which allows for quick statistical analysis to spot promising
new developments. For this reason, the ratio of wounded to killed was 6 in
Vietnam, compared to 7.3 for Iraq.
One of the
more interesting findings was that it's better to not try and replace and
immediately all the blood lost to a severely wounded soldier. That's because
lower blood pressure makes it easier to find where all the bleeding is coming
from, and stop it.