Injuries from Combat Explosions in Iraq: Injury Type, Location, and Severity.

摘要

Combat-related blasts have caused large percentages of injuries in Iraq, and improvements in body armor and field medical care have improved survival and changed service personnels' injury profile. This study's objective is to describe the nature, body region, and severity of these injuries. A descriptive analysis was conducted of 4623 combat-related blast episodes in Iraq. The most frequent single injury type was mild traumatic brain injury (TBI; 10.8%). Other frequent injuries were open wounds in the lower extremity (8.8%) and open wounds of the face (8.2%). The extremities was the body region most often injured (41.3%), followed by head and neck injuries (37.4%) and torso (8.8%). These results support previous observations of TBI as a preeminent injury of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with mild TBI as the most common single injury in this cohort of blast episodes. The variety of injuries across nearly every body region and injury type suggests a complex nature of blast injuries. Understanding the constellation of injuries commonly caused by combat-related blasts will assist in the mitigation, treatment, and rehabilitation of these injuries.