Lessons From Military Surgeries Informed Treatment of Boston Victims
By GINA KOLATA, NYT
BOSTON — For years, Dr. Michael J. Weaver, an orthopedic trauma surgeon, went to meetings of his professional society and heard surgeons from the military describe what they had learned treating blast injuries. Then he would return to his practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he mostly treated people injured in auto accidents or falls.
All that changed on Monday when victims of the bombings at the Boston Marathon arrived.
“We’ve seen similar injuries, but never of this magnitude,” Dr. Weaver said. “This is completely different.” The military experience, he added, “has been phenomenally helpful.”
But doctors said they had also prepared for a disaster, with regular drills. At Massachusetts General Hospital, for example, part of the emergency department’s disaster preparedness included bins of special wristbands to identify disaster patients.
“We can’t sit there and write names of patients” on wristbands, said Dr. R. Malcolm Smith, chief of the medical center’s orthopedic trauma service. Instead, medical personnel in the emergency department slapped wristbands on patients that identified them with special disaster numbers. The bands said simply, Disaster Victim 001, Disaster Victim 002, and so on. Patients’ names were added later.
(More here.)
BOSTON — For years, Dr. Michael J. Weaver, an orthopedic trauma surgeon, went to meetings of his professional society and heard surgeons from the military describe what they had learned treating blast injuries. Then he would return to his practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where he mostly treated people injured in auto accidents or falls.
All that changed on Monday when victims of the bombings at the Boston Marathon arrived.
“We’ve seen similar injuries, but never of this magnitude,” Dr. Weaver said. “This is completely different.” The military experience, he added, “has been phenomenally helpful.”
But doctors said they had also prepared for a disaster, with regular drills. At Massachusetts General Hospital, for example, part of the emergency department’s disaster preparedness included bins of special wristbands to identify disaster patients.
“We can’t sit there and write names of patients” on wristbands, said Dr. R. Malcolm Smith, chief of the medical center’s orthopedic trauma service. Instead, medical personnel in the emergency department slapped wristbands on patients that identified them with special disaster numbers. The bands said simply, Disaster Victim 001, Disaster Victim 002, and so on. Patients’ names were added later.
(More here.)
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