Abstract
Background War wounds produce a significant burden on medical facilities in war. Workload from the recent conflict was documented in order to guide medical needs in future conflicts.
Method Data on war injuries was collected prospectively. In addition, all patients sustaining penetrating injuries that received their treatment at our hospital had their wounds scored using the Red Cross wound classification. This information was supplemented with a review of all patients admitted during the study period.
Results During the first two weeks of the conflict, the sole British field hospital in the region received 482 casualties. One hundred and four were battle injuries of which nine were burns. Seventy-nine casualties had their initial surgery performed by British military surgeons and form the study group. Twenty-nine casualties (37%) sustained gunshot wounds, 49 casualties (62%) suffered wounds due to fragmentation weapons and one casualty detonated an anti personnel mine. Sixty-four casualties (81%) sustained limb injuries. These 79 patients had a total of 123 wounds that were scored using the Red Cross wound classification. Twenty-seven of the wounded (34%) were non-combatants; of these, eight were children. Median delay from point of wounding to definitive care for coalition forces was 6 hours (range 1 to 11.5 hours) compared to 12 hours (range 1 hour to 7 days) for Iraqi casualties. Four patients (5%) died; all had sustained gunshot wounds.
Conclusion War continues to demand that a full spectrum of hospital specialists be available to treat our own personnel and the Defence Medical Services are increasingly likely to be called to provide humanitarian assistance to wounded non-combatants. Military medical skills, training and available resources must reflect these fundamental changes in order to properly prepare for future conflicts.
The abstracts were prepared by Secretary Mr K Trimble.
