APRIL 30, 2007
National Review of Medicine

VOLUME 4 NO. 8

POLICY & POLITICS

Iraq war and the military medicine sea change

Advanced body armour saves lives, not heads. VA flooded with brain injuries

By Owen Dyer

To most Americans, the failure of the Iraq War is best measured by the remorseless count of their dead — 3,300 soldiers, with nearly three more, on average, added every day. But the recent scandal surrounding the US Army's biggest hospital, Walter Reed, has cast a spotlight on the plight of the war's wounded.

For American soldiers, Iraq is above all a war of the wounded and the disabled. Effective body armour and improved battlefield medicine have transformed the soldier's survivability. Nowadays, if you're still alive when the medic arrives, you're unlikely to succumb to shock or blood loss. The flip side of this success story is that more and more soldiers are living with debilitating wounds. ..

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