Combat Medicine

The events of September 11, 2001 have clearly demonstrated that the future pathologies of warfare will increasingly affect noncombatant populations on a large scale and require new levels of treatment expertise. In Combat Medicine: Basic and Clinical Research in Military, Trauma, and Emergency Medicine, highly accomplished clinical and basic investigators concisely review the leading research issues confronting emergency and military medicine today. These experts begin by presenting the latest thinking about the molecular and cellular mechanisms of trauma-apoptosis, abnormalities in nitric oxide production, complement activation, and immune cell response to stressors-that lead to tissue damage, and then describe cutting-edge research aimed at understanding and reversing the consequent damage to major organs. The clinical conditions covered include hemorrhagic shock and resuscitation, ischemia-reperfusion injury, acute respiratory distress syndrome, thermal injury, inhalation injury, and traumatic brain injury. The authors discuss the natures of combat pathologies, current research, emerging treatments, red blood cell storage, and bioterrorism involving anthrax, smallpox, plague, and other infectious and toxic agents. Cutting-edge and timely, Combat Medicine: Basic and Clinical Research in Military, Trauma, and Emergency Medicine offers not only clinical and basic investigators, but also surgical and medical residents, a concise introduction to the principal clinical conditions encountered in emergency, disaster, and combat medicine, as well as an up-to-date statement of where our diagnostic and treatment programs now stand, and what we still need to learn for future preparedness.