Critical Care for Ballistic Trauma in Austere Environments

Clearly recent wars and natural disasters have provided new insight on delivering critical care medicine in austere environments. Recent literature reviews and anecdotal experiences from clinicians providing care under such conditions support the view that sophisticated critical care can be provided worldwide even where advanced infrastructure with sophisticated technology is unavailable. While the orientation of this chapter is focused on deployed military settings, it could certainly be adapted for use in a civilian setting during periods of disaster management, catastrophes, and other incidents of mass casualty critical care (Fig. 38.1).