Enhanced medical training of front line medical personnel, personal protective equipment, and the presence of far forward surgical assets have improved the survival of casualties in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As such, casualties are at higher risk of infectious complications of their injuries including sepsis, which was a noted killer of casualties in previous wars. During the cu...

BACKGROUND Recent civilian studies have documented a relationship between increased mortality and the presence of an early coagulopathy of trauma diagnosed in the emergency department (ED). We hypothesized that acute coagulopathy (international normalized ratio >/=1.5) in combat casualties was associated with increased injury severity and mortality as is seen in civilian trauma patients. METH...

During a major incident, the emergency services work together to ensure that those casualties who are critically injured are identified and transported to an appropriate hospital as fast as possible. If the incident is multi-site and resources are limited, the efficiency of this process is compromised as the finite resources must be shared among the multiple sites. In this paper, agent-based si...

This paper presents a new approach to the casualty treatment problem following a large-scale disaster, based on a mathematical model of how a regional health-care system responds to an earthquake event. The numbers and locations of casualties rescued alive, the scale of pre-hospital care, the post-earthquake hospital capacity, and the transport system are inputs to the model. The model simulate...

Scholars have long conceptualized public support for war as the product of a cost– benefit calculation in which combat casualties factor significantly. This article argues that, when calculating the human costs of conflict, Americans care about more than just the number of war dead; they also care about the distribution of those casualties across society. Using two original survey experiments, ...

Submarine escape training for submarine personnel has been conducted by the U. S. Navy since 1930. By 1957, more than 250,000 ascents had been recorded. Most casualties due to this traininginvolved extra-alveolar air and/or embolism, and those few casualties which have occurred had usually been recorded and reported. In view of this, several questions were asked, among them one concerning the i...

If the food sector is attacked, the likely agents will be chemical, biological, or radionuclear (CBRN). We compiled a database of international terrorist/criminal activity involving such agents. Based on these data, we calculate the likelihood of a catastrophic event using extreme value methods. At the present, the probability of an event leading to 5,000 casualties (fatalities and injuries) is...

This paper examines factors leading to the low rate of combat psychiatric casualties in the British recapture of the Falklands compared to the American experience in North Africa, Italy, Europe and South Pacific theatres during World War II, the Korean Conflict and Vietnam. The factors compared are those thought to affect rates seen in these past wars. The factors highlighted are psychiatric sc...

OBJECTIVE To examine the accuracy of theoretical triage decision making among emergency prehospital health care professionals, using a multiple casualty paper exercise. METHODS A standardised 20 casualty paper exercise requiring each casualty to be prioritised for treatment was given to 100 doctors, 59 nurses, and 74 ambulance paramedics who could potentially be involved at the scene of a mul...

Blast injuries are an increasing problem in both military and civilian practice. Primary blast injury to the lungs (blast lung) is found in a clinically significant proportion of casualties from explosions even in an open environment, and in a high proportion of severely injured casualties following explosions in confined spaces. Blast casualties also commonly suffer secondary and tertiary blas...