Head Cases

Doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war … [doctors] struggle with the implications of a system that can move a wounded soldier from a booby-trapped roadside to an operating room in less than an hour. “We’re saving more people than should be saved, probably,” Lt. Col. Robert Carroll said. “We’re saving severely injured people. Legs. Eyes. Part of the brain” … Troops wear armor as well, providing protection that Gullick called “orders of magnitude from what we’ve had before. But it just shifts the injury pattern from a lot of abdominal injuries to extremity and head and face wounds.”