Emergency War Surgery.........The NATO Manual

Emergency War Surgery..... Second United States Revision...The Emergency War Surgery NATO Handbook ,  Published by: Desert Publications, El Dorado, Arkansas,  This edition 1992          Publishers phone #: 870-862-3811                Publisher's contact information: info@deltapress.com

                

                 This book arrived today, and happily, I have had some time to read and digest some of it. I note the disclaimer in the front which states that the book has been published for entertainment purposes only and that the publisher is not endorsing that we do any of the procedures described.  The book is really only of any use to those who have significant medical training, those who are near completion of their third year of medical school, those who are military corpsmen and who have done the outlined procedures, civilian Physician Assistants who have worked in critical care or surgical settings, experienced trauma nurses,  Nurse Practitioners whose specialties have allowed them surgical or critical care practice, family practice physicians with interests in disaster and war medicine,  Board certified physicians in the specialties of urology, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, trauma, oral surgeons, plastic surgeons, and a few critical care registered nurses and a few surgeon's assistants.    Almost anyone else is out of their league.  Pharmacists may find this helpful should they ever be conscripted by FEMA or the US federal government to be "Pharmacist Practitioners", following a nuclear or chemical attack.
          
              The benefits are that a person who is medically trained can look up particular injuries or issues and in a difficult situation, can see goal-setting and direction.   The drawbacks are that the book pre-supposes a certain amount of back-up laboratory ability, a certain amount of available antibiotics and pain meds availability, and a certain amount of intravenous administration ability with both plain fluids, and intravenous admixtures.    Attempting many of the procedures in the book without the aforementioned items, may be foolish. I do think that this belongs in the library of anyone who is medically trained, particularly for the information on cold injury, chemical injury, discussions of infection, and burn injury.

     This book is available at:

       http://www.nitro-pak.com/emergency-war-surgery


The book is very interesting, but is no substitute for genuine medical training.   In the past, I have encouraged those of you with this type of an interest and calling to make arrangements with:


      www.medicalcorps.com      

    They run periodic excellent courses in practical medical interventions
    including suturing including the indications for doing so, dental interventions, etc.