Published: May 14, 2008 12:00 pm            

Brain trauma

The Korean War (a police action — no declaration by congress) of the early 1950s had its MASH — Mobile Army Surgical Units. The Iraqi War of the 2000s first decade has its AFTH — Air Force Theater Hospital, located at the Balad Air Base, 40 miles north of Baghdad.

Balad Hospital is the brain injury capital of the world. Its personnel see more damaged brains than any other facility in the world. Balad neurosurgeons are the world’s most experienced neurotrauma specialists in history. The global war on terror has already yielded more than 10,000 survivable traumatic brain injuries to American troops. There are no indications the rate will slow. Each month, 800 people, of which one- fourth are Iraqis, are treated.

A horse’s kick might have meant death 100 years ago; 30 tears ago, a severe brain injury meant unemployment; 5 years ago, a severe brain injury meant a long coma with a daily condition of total dependence. At Balad Hospital, a golf ball-sized missile through the skull usually means survival.

A brain injured person in America has a 71 percent chance of being alive after an ER visit. If a brain injury occurs anywhere in Iraq and the person is medevaced to Balad, chances of survival go to 98 percent, the highest rate of survival for any trauma hospital in history. Steps the average emergency room may take several hours to complete are accomplished at Balad in minutes. Record time from admit to operating room is 18 minutes, which includes CAT scan and lab work.

The military in Iraq are proud of their medevac capabilities. Today, an active duty service member can make it from Balad to Germany to America in 48 hours; during Vietnam, the journey home averaged 20 days.

The thousands of Iraqi police and civilians treated at Balad have a different aftermath — admission marks them in their community. Once at Balad, they’re afraid to leave . For them, it can be a death ticket. For receiving American help, or if they are working in any capacity assisting the Americans, or married to any such person, the ‘bad guys’ will find and kill them or family members.

The Rand corporation recently released a study of service members and veterans back home from Iraq and Afghanistan, Invisible Wounds of War; Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery.

Pentagon data show 1.6 million military personnel have deployed since war began in Afghanistan in 2001. The Rand study put the percentage of those suffering PTSD at 18.5 percent or 300,000. A director of a veterans group called duty in the Mideast wars, ‘360-365’ — all around, every day; veterans are completely surrounded, under fire, by combat for one year or more.

The Rand studies for the wars add up: 300,000 psychological casualties, 320,000 brain causalities, which add up to over 625,000 — over 100,000 Americans killed or wounded every year since the wars began.

The nightmarish shortages and lack of sufficient VA and American health care still exists.

If the 100,000 casualties each year gets out to the public, will the presidential candidates examine their thinking about when to leave Iraq?

H. Richard Horberger and Larry Gelbart created and developed the MASH television series about 20 years after the Korean conflict.

Who of today’s TV people will start TV’s AFTH series 20 some years after Iraq’s end — assuming that it will end, someday?

Cecil Acuff is a Perkins resident.

        

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