Medical Advancements in the First World War

Question 1

What was a wound excision / debridement?

Answer 1

• Cutting away dead, damaged or infected tissue.
• It needed to be done as quickly as possible to prevent infection spreading.
• At the beginning of the war this was the only way of preventing the need for amputation.
• After excision the would needed to be closed with stitches.
• If any infected tissue had not been removed before stitching, the infection would spread again.

Question 2

What is the Carrel-Dakin method?

Answer 2

• Antiseptics such as carbolic lotion were inefficient when treating gas gangrene.
• In December 1915, French surgeon Alexis Carrel and English chemist Henry Dakin perfected a technique of putting sterilized salt solution in a wound through a tube, this solution was only effective for 6 hours so had to be done as soon as possible.
• This was made difficult due to the amount of soldiers who needed treatment and it was also very painful.
• Only after the wound had been disinfected thoroughly would surgeons attempt to stitch it back up.

Question 3

How was brain surgery made better?

Answer 3

At the start of the way brain injury’s were very likely to prove fatal because of.
- The issue of infection, Difficulty moving injured soldiers through the chain of evacuation as they were unconscious, Very few doctors had experience of neurosurgery before the war.

However observation grew to quick improvement. Harvey Cushing was a key person to helped develop new techniques in brain surgery.
He experimented with magnets to remove metal fragments from the brain.
He also used local anesthetic rather than general anesthetic as general anesthetic often caused the brain to swell.
He operated on 45 patients in 1917 and 71% survived, the usual was 50%.