WOUNDED SAVED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21260, 24 November 1943, Page 4

WOUNDED SAVED

USE OF BLOOD PLASMA AMERICAN EXPERIENCE The extraordinary difference made in the treatment of war wounds by the use of blood plasma and sulfa drugs is emphasised in on article which has been sent to New Zealand by the United States Navy Department. Mo=t of the 14.014 United States soldiers, sailors and marines who died of wounds in the last war. it says, might have lived if the use of plasma had been possible and if the sulfonamides and tetanus toxoid had been discovered. The great dangers from wounds -have always been shock, haemorrhage, infection and delay. Science and organisation have virtually conquered all four. - At Pearl Harbour, most of the wounded received -hospital treatment within a few hours, and hence it is not surprising that the number of infections was low. In spite of many severe burns, the mortality was kept below 3 per cent. At Guadalcanal', the rate went do.wn to 1 per cent, and though at Oran some of the American wounded were not found for several days, only .5 per cent of cases that reached the hospitals died of infection. Of 4039 casualties on a hospital ship in the south-west Pacific only seven difed, or less than .2 per cent.

The department mentions the new drug penicillin, which is not yet available for mass use. It is obtained in minute quantities from a fungus mould and is many times more powerful than the sulfa drugs and is less toxic. Experiments showed such brilliant promise that doctors were almost afraid to believe in them, but recent trials in hospitals have added proof to the promise, and it is hoped that the drug will soon go into quantity production. There is as yet no drug that prevents malaria, adds the department’s article, but hopeful experiments are being carried out with sulfonamides. But malaria can be suppressed, and once it peaches the clinical stage, cured.

Wounds of the abdomen, which in the last war caused death to 70 to 80 per cent of patients who survived long enough to get to the hospitals, now have ' a mortality rate of only 5 per cent.