The evolution of casualty evacuation in the 20th century (Part 4)--an international perspective.

This is the fourth in a series of papers that review the evolution of the military casualty evacuation during the 20th Century. The previous three papers have looked at the British Army system. This paper looks at the organisation of army medical services from the United States, Israel, Russia and Croatia and compares these with the British Army system reported in the previous papers. All national army medical services have evolved organisations to reduce the time lag between injury and surgery for their wounded. The paper will show that there are some fundamental differences in the organisation of medical units to achieve this aim. Helicopters are almost universally used for the evacuation of seriously ill casualties when this is practicable.