Doctors turn to World War I for answers

Roger Boyes wrote an excellent article in the 4/20/07 London Times Online about the treatment of war wounded in Landstuhl, Germany, which he describes as "a sprawling clinical compound close to the French border that was designed as a Hitler Youth campus. Landstuhl, nestled in a lush valley, is as verdant and as sleepy as Fallujah is dusty and noisy; the chokepoint of a controversial war."

He notes many details about the wounded and their caregivers. Arriving injured soldiers still have the sand of Iraq stuck to their boots. He notes that Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is common among wounded, as many are hurt in bomb blasts. It’s a return to the days of World War I, when TBI also was a common injury of troops who crouched in trenches while shells burst around them.

Writes Boyes: "There is no collective memory in the U.S., as there is in the British Army, of soldierly experience in previous wars: of trench warfare in 1915, of desert campaigning in the Second World War, of the long Northern Ireland operations. The American textbooks are written by Vietnam veterans. The mental health experts have, however, been mugging up on the First World War: the overlapping symptoms of TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder bear a remarkable resemblance to the shell shock suffered, sometimes for decades, by survivors of the Somme. The combination of noise, fear and pain overloads the brain."

Boyes ends the article with some sobering statistics gleaned from a variety of sources, including the Journal of the American Medical Association, icasualties.org, and Sen. Christopher Dodd’s office. Here they are:

3,312 US military personnel have died in Iraq since March 20, 2003

26,188 have been injured up to February 3 this year

19.1% of troops returning from Iraq report mental health problems, compared with 11.3% from Afghanistan and 8.5% from other theatres

27,886 of the 146,000 US troops serving in Iraq would eventually require psychological help if that rate continued

4% of troops suffer post-traumatic stress disorder after a month in Iraq, rising to 12% after seven months [what about 15 months?]

4.4% are depressed after a month, rising to 9% at seven months

90% of casualties in Iraq survive, compared with 69.7% in the Second World War and 76.4% in Vietnam

20% of survivors have serious head or spinal injuries, and another 6% are amputees

How you can help: The New York City-based nonprofit organization "10 in 10 Project" sponsors the "Ticket of Hope" campaign to raise money to provide support for TBI patients after they are discharged from the hospital. The group has put together Brain Injury Recovery Kits, designed to aid recovery for soldiers (and others) with brain injuries. Each kit costs $600. For more information visit 10in10project.org or call the free hotline at (877) 989-1010.