Western Pacific Territories wrote:@Puz to follow up unoriginally, what would you and your other doctor mates have done if a soldier came in with a gunshot wound in the left hip from a Dragunov 7.62x54mm round?
This i can actually answer.
Firstly I was never a Battlefeild surgon, I'm currently a trauma surgeon at a medical center in a reletivly crap city on the Eastern Seaboard of the US, so I wouldn't expect to see someone come in with a shot from an SVD. But ignoring that, we have steps.
1. Patient assessment. GSWs are always pushed to the top of my list. The assessment is carried out by the Paramedics on sight, fed to me via them, and continued assessment is preformed on delivery. Depending on the seriousness of this patient (Glasgow, vitals), surgery might not be necessary, or even an option. I'll assume they need it.
2. Yell at a bunch of people while I scrub up. The patient is put to critical care teams, who begin giving them necessary fluids and make the sleepy time happen.
2.5. imaging is always important but not always possible. I hate going into surgery's blind, but sometimes it may be a necessity depending on the patients needs. In this stage, X-Rays and other imaging and diagnostic tools are used. We use these to plan out routes, know what we need to do on the inside.
3. Surgery time. Typical complications include necessitating the closure of large tissue wounds, the resetting of bone, extraction of bone fragments (since it's near a joint), closure of major blood vessels, and closure of the wound. Extraction of bullet is not always necessary.
4. Post surgery imaging, planning, and consultation.
That's the super simple crash overview. I couldn't even sit here for four hours and type out everything that's necessary, it takes teams of people hours to do things properly and administratively, and the surgery itself can take hours. My longest surgery took 21.5 hours. A typical one for me is 3-5.