Posted on 11/05/2004 11:50:00 AM PST by dangus
Most troops evacuated for medical care weren't hurt in combat Sunday, October 31, 2004 David Wood Newhouse News Service
Washington - When an American trooper is flown out of Iraq for medical care, chances are almost nine out of 10 that the patient wasn't hurt in battle.
As of Sept. 30, more than 87 percent of the 14,452 U.S. soldiers sent to Army medical facilities from Iraq since the war began in March 2003 were suffering from disease or from noncombat injuries such as sprained ankles, lower back pain, heart palpitations and psychiatric disorders, military health officials said. Advertisement
More than 25 times more soldiers - 7,196 - were evacuated for treatment of general disease than for gunshot wounds, Army medical records show.
Five times more U.S. soldiers - 2,798 - were evacuated with common muscle or bone injuries than with wounds from roadside bombs, the chief cause of battle wounds in Iraq.
And more than twice as many soldiers - 885 - were evacuated for psychiatric treatment as were for shrapnel wounds.
The statistics, provided by the Army surgeon general's office, are the most complete and detailed accounting of wounded U.S. military personnel. They do not include evacuees of the Marine Corps, Air Force or Navy.
In every conflict, huge numbers of soldiers have been felled by sickness or accident. "The big killer in war has been disease, not the enemy," said John Greenwood, the Army's chief medical historian.
That began to change in World War I, when advances in military medicine and simple field sanitation reduced the numbers killed by dysentery and typhoid, epidemics of which swept the camps of the Spanish-American and Civil wars. Thousands of soldiers died of influenza in World War I, however.
Yet even today's toll of injured and sick soldiers - the Pentagon can't say how many return to duty in a given period - is a significant drain on the forces available for combat. Consequently, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has asked for a 50 percent reduction in nonbattle injury losses over the next 24 months.
Reducing some accidents is a matter of common sense:
"Don't jump off the back of a five-ton [truck] with a fully loaded rucksack," advises Lt. Col. David Sproat, a physician on the Army surgeon general's medical staff. "With that extra weight, you're likely to sprain an ankle."
Other injuries, Pentagon health officials say, may be the inevitable outcome of men and women doing hard physical work with heavy machinery in extremes of heat, danger and stress.
Traffic accidents are a major cause of injury, as Army drivers drift off the road, oversteer and overturn, said Lt. Col. Darryl Bowman, an infantry officer at the Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.
Most patients are flown to the military medical center at Landstuhl, Germany, the largest American hospital outside the United States.
The evacuations stem from a Pentagon decision not to build large medical facilities in Iraq. Instead, hospitals and field surgeries there are designed for "fast surgical lifesaving for combat- type injuries and for general medical care without a lot of specialty expertise," said Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, a senior medical officer on Rumsfeld's staff.
Three Army combat hospitals operate in five locations in Iraq; altogether about 6,200 Army doctors, nurses, medics and other medical specialists serve in Iraq, part of the 138,000 Army personnel there.
Military patients needing the attention of specialists, or who require convalescent care of more than seven days - a soldier with a diseased gallbladder, for example - are sent on to Germany.
"This reflects our ability to move people quickly and safely," Sproat said.
But he added that the Army would rather treat soldiers in Iraq, so they can get back to their units.
Neither the surgeon general's office nor the Pentagon could specify the number of wounded treated inside Iraq and returned to duty there. But Army officials said "most" of the wounded fit that category - a tribute to "the incredible quality of medical people there and the medical sys tems we have in place," Sproat said.
For soldiers suffering from extreme anxiety, depression and stress, the preferred treatment is "three hots and a cot"- hot meals and bed rest well away from the action.
The problem, Sproat said, is that "in Iraq there are no rear areas. With stress casualties, you can't take them back past where the guns are, where it's quiet. You need to get them back to Germany, unfortunately."
"Hey, watch this" injuries probably account for at least a third...
No mention of pregnancy as a major medical basis for being shipped stateside.
DATUM!
please spread the ping, gentlemen
>>"Hey, watch this" injuries probably account for at least a third...<<
Those who don't know military types will feign being aghast that that comment degrades our fighting men.
Those who know military types will smile.
..they never rode in a Thai cab
Doogle
sarcasm intended!
Well, lets say this:
You put a quarter million guys, far fewer women, way too much time and lotsa "guy" stuff -- yeah, okay, "guy" stuff isn't so gender specific anymore, but ya know what I mean -- and stuff is going to happen.
But the medical teams are doing a really great job I hear.
To prevent injuries: "OK, guys, just remember: Every time you guys jump out of a movin gvehicle with your packs loaded and sprain your ankles, we know to you a little sprained ankle is no big deal. But every time you get a boo-boo, you just become one more statistic for a Michael Moore movie. So please, play it safe and save us some helicopter fuel."
and as they say...
sheeeet happens LOL
but let us all keep the Marines and the Soldiers in our prayers because the manure is about to hit the proverbial fan when we "drain the swamp" any day now in Iraq...
Semper Fi,
Kelly
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