EWSH.pdf

Emergency

War Surgery

T HIRD U NITED S TATES R EVISION

2004

iii

“All the circumstances of war surgery thus do violence to civilian

concepts of traumatic surgery. The equality of organizational and

professional management is the first basic difference. The second

is the time lag introduced by the military necessity of evacuation.

The third is the necessity for constant movement of the wounded

man, and the fourth — treatment by a number of different

surgeons at different places instead of by a single surgeon in one

place — is inherent in the third. These are all undesirable factors,

and on the surface they seem to militate against good surgical

care. Indeed, when the over-all circumstances of warfare are

added to them, they appear to make more ideal surgical treatment

impossible. Yet this was not true in the war we have just finished

fighting, nor need it ever be true. Short cuts and measures of

expediency are frequently necessary in military surgery, but

compromises with surgical adequacy are not.”

—Michael E. DeBakey, MD

Presented at Massachusetts General Hospital

Boston, October 1946

THE THIRD UNITED STATES REVISION

EMERGENCY WAR SURGERY

IS DEDICATED TO THE

COMBAT PHYSICIAN