Congrats to Johan von Schreeb and colleagues for their important new paper Epidemiology of Trauma Patients from the Mosul Offensive, 2016-2017: Results from a Dedicated Trauma Center in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan. Nerlander, M.P., Haweizy, R.M., Wahab, M.A. et al. World J Surg (2018).
The authors did a retrospective cohort study looking at trauma patients admitted to the Emergency Management Center in Erbil from October 16, 2016 to July 10, 2017. They found that of 1,725 patients, most were soldiers (54%). Most injuries were caused by ordnance (68%), followed by firearms (18%) and IEDs (14%). The overall mortality rate was only 0.5% indicating that many patients possibly died before receiving needed care and could have benefited from better prehospital care and transport.
This paper provides another important look at the Mosul trauma response and provides additional information not found in the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health report: The Mosul Trauma Response-A Case Study.
If you want to learn more about #SurgeryInConflict, we suggest getting a copy of Operation Crisis: Surgical care in the developing world during conflict and disaster. The book includes chapters on what a day in the life of an MSF surgery in South Sudan is like and a detailed account of the U.S. military’s trauma care system for injured soldiers. It is available from JHU Press or on Amazon.
Operation Health: A series of books on surgery and global health from Johns Hopkins University Press 