Military Medicine on the Battlefield: Iraq and Afghanistan Revisited

Among the first concerns of any nation going to war is to provide battlefield care to maintain combat readiness, return the injured to duty, and save lives. Maintaining combat readiness is a function of routine and acute medical care, and preventive medicine in-theater and back home. Returning service personnel to duty and saving lives rests on emergency, life-saving care on the battlefield, and swift evacuation to the appropriate military medical facilities. The logistic and moral challenges of providing superlative care in austere conditions to a large and diverse patient base are enormous.

Among the largest Coalition contingents, nearly three million American soldiers and 300,000 British soldiers served in Iraq and Afghanistan where they suffered 6951 and 633 dead, and approximately 53,000 and 13,000 wounded respectively. This number excludes more than 7500 US contractors who lost their lives. The American injured included at least 1,045 amputees, 320,000 cases of traumatic brain injury (TBI), and 300,000 incidents of post-traumatic stress (PTSD), depression and moral injury. Despite these casualties, warfighters enjoyed better medicine, better evacuation, and better protection than in all previous wars. As a result, less than 15% of all wounded died, a substantial improvement compared to the 20% to 25% of wounded who perished since the US Civil War and through the Vietnam War. These figures only outline the challenge of treating military personnel. It was soon apparent that host nation allies and civilians would make growing demands on Coalition healthcare facilities, demands for which they were neither funded nor prepared to meet effectively...

Some Chapter Topics

• A War Chronology: From Invasion to Reconstruction
• Military Medicine on a Changing Battlefield: Military and Civilian Players
• Military Medicine in the Invasion Period: Meeting The IED Threat
• Military Medicine and Reconstruction
• Medical Care in the Conflict Zone: Key Points