The Pentagon likes to refer to combat euphemistically as “kinetic” activity.  This very important report documents the truly impressive advances in battlefield medicine in Afghanistan to cope with the kinetic activity that hurts our troops.  The bottom line:  the ratio of killed to wounded has decreased at an amazing rate, because many troop suffering from heretofore fatal wounds involving the destruction of multiple limbs, severe groin, traumatic brain injuries, massive losses of blood, and battlefield shock are now surviving, albeit many in a severely handicapped state.  The need to provide quality care and rehabilitation to the severely wounded (as well as the lessor wounded–particularly those with the sharply rising cases of the milder forms of brain trauma) is an as yet unaccounted for cost of the Afghan war that will haunt the American medical system and the larger society for generations.

We can only imagine what is happening to the Afghan civilians on the receiving end of our kinetics.

Chuck

January 7, 2011

In Wider War in Afghanistan, Survival Rate of Wounded Rises

By C. J. CHIVERS

KHAKREZ DISTRICT, Afghanistan — Intensified fighting and a larger troop presence in Afghanistan in 2010 led to the highest American combat casualties yet in the war, as the number of troops wounded by bullets, shrapnel and bombs approached that of the bloodiest periods of the war in Iraq.

But the available data points to advances in the treatment of the fallen, as the rate at which wounded soldiers who died reached a wartime low.

More than 430 American service members died from hostile action in Afghanistan last year through Dec. 21, according to official data released by the Pentagon last week at the request of The New York Times.

This was a small fraction of those struck. Nearly 5,500 American troops were wounded in action — more than double the total of 2,415 in 2009, and almost six times the number wounded in 2008.

In all, fewer than 7.9 percent of the Americans wounded in 2010 died, down from more than 11 percent the previous year and 14.3 percent in 2008.

Full Story Online….

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