A movement to revolutionize the treatment of trauma patients in the U.S. can be traced to an infamous battle fought in East Africa more than 30 years ago. Dr. John Holcomb was an Army trauma surgeon deployed to Somalia when two Black Hawk helicopters were shot down over the city of Mogadishu in 1993. With dozens of soldiers bleeding out and no hospitals available, the head doctor told Holcomb to prepare for a “walking blood bank.” “I had never heard of such a thing,” Holcomb recalled.
“We had to prepare to care for up to 50 simultaneous casualties,” Jenkins said. He had read about using whole blood — as opposed to platelets or plasma — for trauma patients but had no training in it. “It was not a thing,” he said. The arrival of the wounded soldiers posed a serious challenge. With few other options, Jenkins pulled out from his back pocket a “NATO emergency war surgery handbook,” which described how to administer whole blood, a section co-written by Holcomb.
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