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In an unassuming building in suburban Washington, a team of military medical specialists spent six months poring over autopsies of 4,016 men and women who had died on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.

They read reports from the morgue at Dover Air Force Base, where bodies arrived in flag-draped coffins. They examined toxicology reports. They winced at gruesome photos of bullet wounds and shredded limbs. In each case, the doctors pieced together the evidence to determine the exact cause of death.

Their conclusion would roil U.S. military medicine: Nearly a quarter of Americans killed in action over 10 years—almost 1,000 men and women—died of wounds they could potentially have survived. In nine out of 10 cases, troops bled to death from wounds that might have been stanched. In 8%, soldiers succumbed to airway damage that better care might have controlled. “Obviously one death or one bad outcome is too many, but there are a lot of them,” said one of the researchers, John Holcomb, a former commander of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research.

The findings appeared in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery in 2012 to almost no public attention. But in military medical circles, they have fueled a behind-the-scenes controversy that rages to this day over whether American men and women are dying needlessly—and whether the Pentagon is doing enough to keep them alive.

via Are U.S. Soldiers Dying From Survivable Wounds? – WSJ.

A very disturbing article.

Are some soldiers dying from survivable wounds?

Of course.

I suspect that the tactical situation in some incidents listed here had a direct influence on the outcome.  Rapid evacuation isn’t always possible. Or sometimes, your buddy simply can’t get to you to treat you. Or worse, no one realizes at first that you are wounded.

Just since 2001, the military has made great strides in improving the immediate lifesaving care provided by buddy care, Combat Lifesaver care, medics, and evacuation teams, to say nothing of the advances in trauma medicine at frontline hospitals, and the expeditious evacuation of critically wounded to definitive care hospitals in Germany and the US.

But there is always room for improvement. I suspect the percentage they quote is quite high. But the Army has a moral obligation to continue to strive to shrink that number.