Civilian battle casualties in South Vietnam

Ibo civilian casualties in the Nigerian Civil War.

“…The largest number of deaths were caused by this type of wound, and this is in keeping with other reported series (Aird, 1944;Lowden, 1944;Blackburn and Rob, 1945;Beebe and De Bakey, 1952;Gordon Taylor, 1953;Dudley et al, 1968). Energetic resuscitation, the availability of blood, modern anaesthesia, and the free use of antibiotics were the main causes contributory to the relatively high rate of recovery.…”

“…The distribution of deaths and the site of major injury that each patient who died sustained are shown in Table II. Abdominal wounds were the most lethal injuries, and this is in keeping with experience in other wars (Wallace, 1918;Ogilvie, 1944aOgilvie, , 1944bLowden, 1944;Sako et al, 1955;Dudley et al, 1968). Our overall mortality was refugees, who had responded to Ojukwu's call in October 1966 to all Ibos to return to their homeland.…”

“…As expected a 50 %' mortality rate is higher than that in the whole series of abdominal injuries and is not much of an improvement on the days before antibiotics (Aird, 1944). This shows how important speedy evacuation is with this kind of injury, and where evacuation is good, as in Vietnam, the mortality is lower (Dudley et al, 1968). In this series abdomino-thoracic wounds did not appear to have a worse prognosis than abdominal wounds.…”

“…The overall mortality rate was 6-3 %. Much has been written about the American military experience in Vietnam (Schmitt et al, 1967), but little about the treatment of civilians (Brass, 1967;Dudley et al, 1968) in these conditions. These people, often innocent bystanders unaware of the purposes of war, always have an understaffed and underfinanced medical organization, if it exists at all.…”

“…The basis of the scheme adopted was that used by the British Army (War Office, 1950). Fractures combined with soft-tissue injuries were treated with immediate internal fixation where this was practicable, for as Dudley et al (1968) point out, implanted metal does not of itself cause infection, and if all dead tissue, including bone, is excised, rigid internal fixation provides better circumstances for healing.…”