The 2004 Fitts Lecture: current perspective on combat casualty care.

Abstract : I would like to thank the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma and President Cryer for the opportunity to deliver the 2004 Fitts Lecture. When Dr. Cryer asked me to deliver this lecture, I actually wondered whether he had called the wrong number. Dr. Basil Pruitt described Dr. William P. Fitts in his 1992 Fitts Lecture as a physician soldier in World War II, an author, a chairman, an editor of the Journal of Trauma, and a past President of our association .1 To deliver a talk named after such an esteemed surgeon soldier is indeed a privilege. So, as Commander of the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research (USAISR), and Trauma Advisor to the Army Surgeon General, I am here to represent the men and women who serve in uniform, and I hope to do them justice today. At this point, I would like all Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom personnel to please stand and be recognized. Dr. Donald Trunkey discussed his experiences as a deployed Chief of Professional Services of the 50th Field Hospital during Desert Shield/Desert Storm in the 1991 Fitts Lecture and in a paper in The Archives of Surgery in 1993.2,3 Subsequently, he lectured and wrote multiple afteraction reports, resulting in numerous Government Accounting Reports about these experiences. 10 In summary, Dr. Trunkey believed there was significant room for improvement in our ability to care for injured casualties in a deployed setting. Dr. Basil Pruitt eloquently described the interaction between the AAST and military medicine. Both men are retired Army Colonels who have spent the better part of their careers serving in the military. To prepare for this lecture, I went back and read their articles and reports and discussed their findings with the respective authors, among many others.