Modern war surgery: operations in an evacuation hospital during the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

A forward evacuation hospital functioned in the southern front in October 1973 Israeli-Arab War as an intermediate unit in the Israeli casualty management logistics. Casualties were characterized by frequent multiple-system injuries and variable combinations of penetrating wounds, blunt trauma, burns, and inhalation injury, with an increased incidence of associated blunt trauma. As the result of the systems organization, the EH was able to provide the wounded with early intensive and definitive resuscitation therapy which permitted further evacuation of the casualties to the central hospitals in a better state of physiological stability. In the most critically wounded when there was imminent threat to survival, operations were performed at the EH as an integral part of the resuscitation process. Performance of operations in a forward evacuation hospital did not increase the number or severity of postoperative complications. Morbidity and mortality were related to the nature and magnitude of injury.