A shortage of surgeons to treat the wounded in Iraq has left Army medical teams in the country scrambling to handle the largest number of military casualties since the Vietnam War, the New England Journal of Medicine reports today. The Army has fewer than 50 general surgeons and 15 orthopedic surgeons in Iraq at any one time to serve more than 138,000 troops. Despite the numbers, advances in battlefield surgical techniques and care mean a greater percentage of soldiers wounded in Iraq are surviving than in any previous American conflict. The article describes a military medical system that has undergone fundamental changes since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, but that nonetheless has been overwhelmed by the scope and severity of injuries occurring among troops in Iraq. It was written by Atul Gawande, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and a former senior health advisor to the Clinton White House. Since March 2003, 1,276 U.S. military personnel have died in the Iraq war, with an additional 9,765 wounded, according to Pentagon figures. The number of deaths directly related to combat passed 1,000 this week, the Pentagon said. Full Article
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