Thoraco-abdominal injuries in combat casualties on the Cambodian border.

This article deals with the experience in the management of combined thoraric and abdominal injuries caused by combat casualties, and is based on experience gained in the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) hospital in Khao-I-Dang, Thailand. During a 3 month period a total of 123 patients injured by various battle conditions at the Thailand-Cambodian border were admitted to the ICRC hospital. The thorax was involved in 31 patients, but only 8 of these had a combination of thoracic and intra-abdominal lesions. Although many of the facilities and surgical instruments normally available in modern Western hospitals to deal with seriously injured patients were unavailable to us in field hospital conditions, our series shows that satisfactory results could be obtained even under such stressful and rudimentary conditions.