Introduction:

Knowing the distribution and type of injury in the combatant is a useful tool in the medical support planning for military operations.The objective of this work is to analyze the anatomical distribution of war wounds and determine the relationship with severity according to military Injury Severity Score (mISS) applied to combat casualties.

Material and methods:

A retrospective, descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out on all patients injured by firearms or explosives treated in the Spanish Role 2 of Herat between 2005 and 2014.

Results:

A total of 911 combat casualties with 1689 war injuries were analyzed. The body region most affected were the lower limbs (30.19%), followed by the upper limbs (22.49%) and the craniofacial region (19.06%). Statistically significant differences were found in the distribution of the mISS scores according to the number of anatomical areas affected and between casualties that suffered injuries to the trunk and abdomen and those that did not.

Conclusions:

The injury pattern in combat casualties treated in the Spanish Role 2 of Herat was characterized by injury to the extremities, mainly affecting the lower limbs. Those casualties with injuries to the trunk and abdomen were those with significantly higher scores on the mISS. The severity of the casualties was directly related to the number of anatomical areas affected.