Understanding Combat Casualty Care Statistics

Abstract

Maintaining good hospital records during military conflicts can provide medical personnel and researchers with feedback to rapidly adjust treatment strategies and improve outcomes. But to convert the resulting raw data into meaningful conclusions requires clear terminology and well-thought-out equations, using consistent numerators and denominators. The authors' objective was to arrive at terminology and equations that would produce the best insight into the effectiveness of care at different stages of treatment, either pre- or post-medical treatment facility care. They first clarified three essential terms: (1) the case fatality rate (CFR) as a percentage of fatalities among all wounded, (2) killed in action (KIA) as a percentage of immediate deaths among all seriously injured (not returning to duty), and (3) died of wounds (DOW) as a percentage of deaths following admission to a medical treatment facility among all seriously injured (not returning to duty). These equations were then applied consistently across data from World War II, the Vietnam War, and the current Global War on Terrorism. Using this clear set of definitions, the authors used the equations to ask two basic questions: What is the overall lethality of the battlefield and How effective is combat casualty care? To answer these questions with current data, the three services have collaborated to create a joint theater trauma registry (JTTR), cataloging all the serious injuries, procedures, and outcomes for the current war. These definitions and equations, consistently applied to the JTTR, will allow meaningful comparisons and help direct future research and appropriate application of personnel. Key Words: Combat, Casualty, Statistics.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 2006
Accession Number
ADA480496

Entities

People

  • Charles E Wade
  • Howard R. Champion
  • John B Holcomb
  • Lynn G. Stansbury
  • Ronald F. Bellamy

Organizations

  • United States Army Institute of Surgical Research

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Blood Transfusions
  • Casualties
  • Combat Casualty Care
  • Combat Injuries
  • Data Sets
  • Department Of Defense
  • Evacuation
  • Health Services
  • Medical Personnel
  • Military Medicine
  • Patient Care
  • Second World War
  • Statistics
  • Therapy
  • United States
  • Warfare

Fields of Study

  • Medicine

Readers

  • Approximation Theory.
  • Strategic Security Studies
  • Trauma or Military Medicine