These three stats are related because they all point to the focus of medical care in modern day wars - quick and basic emergency treatment followed up by longer care treatment away from the frontlines. The travel time of a seriously wounded soldier from the frontlines back to the US averages 4 days in Vietnam, it occurred in an average of 45 days A Forward Surgical Team (FST) that travels into combat zones and sets up basic surgical tents carries backpacks with all their necessary equipment and can set up in less than 60 minutes maybe as a function of infections probably taking a lot of lives of the wounded?) Mortality rates for those wounded in World War 2 were 30%, in Vietnam it was 24%, in the Gulf War it was 24%, and in Iraq it has so far been 10% (in the Revolutionary War it was 50%, which is astounding to me. It covers the efforts of battlefield surgeons in Iraq and Afghanistan to save as many wounded in the wars as possible. To continue the chapter-by-chapter discussion of Better by Atul Gawande, here's a quick overview of Chapter 3: Casualties of War.
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