I was speaking with a cardiothoracic surgeon recently, and he brought up the topic of war. “It’s a terrible thing,” he said, “but it does wonders for advancing medicine.”
It was a perspective that I hadn’t previously considered. Estimates suggest that greater than 90% survival rate for soldiers injured in recent combat. Compare that with the Revolutionary War, not 250 years ago, when nearly half of the battle-injured died.
Consider the heart alone. In World War II, faced with unprecedented levels of injury and suffering, military doctors took on heart surgery in a way that had never before been attempted. By pioneering advances in anesthesia, antibiotics and blood transfusions, the heart – once considered too delicate and dangerous to work on – became a viable target for surgical repair.
Beginning with closed-heart surgeries in which surgeons could cut into the heart and use their fingers to blindly feel for and remove shrapnel, techniques evolved for other closed-heart surgeries, such as valve repair. From there, ambitious open-heart procedures were attempted using cooling techniques and heart-lung machines, until transplants were not only tried, but perfected.
Now, with this confidence and experience on their side, surgeons are attempting things that would blow your mind. Minimally invasive coronary artery bypass – all of the benefits of bypass without cracking open the ribcage. Patents issued for minimally invasive valve replacement techniques. Technologies for endovascular repair. The list goes on and on, all thanks to the wartime need to retrieve shrapnel from the heart. Who knows what advances may come from today’s military conflicts?