Over the 2009-11 period, the U.S. military suffered a total of 14,627 casualties, according to the Pentagon’s Defense Casualty Analysis System and iCasualties, a non-governmental organization tracking Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties from published sources.
Of that total, 8,680, or 59 percent, were from IED explosions, based on data provided by the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). And the proportion of all U.S. casualties caused by IEDs continued to increase from 56 percent in 2009 to 63 percent in 2011.
Little is known medically by doctors or scientists about what happens to a brain as a result of a powerful bomb blast, as opposed to car crashes on a highway, blows to the head on a football field or a bullet wound. These are the first wars in which soldiers, protected by strong armor and rapid medical care, routinely survive explosions at close range and then return to combat.
The bomb blasts, which throw off energy waves — atmospheric overpressures and underpressures — that are absorbed by the body, add a little-studied dimension to the trauma. Scientists are only now beginning to study the extent of the damage.
That soldiers are sometimes exposed to multiple blasts during a deployment, or can suffer from a vast combination of wounds, including shrapnel, burns, blows to the head, blast waves, lost limbs or internal injuries, can exacerbate brain trauma in ways unseen among civilians. “It is the black box of injuries,” said Dr. Alisa D. Gean, the chief of neuroradiology at San Francisco General Hospital and a traumatic brain injury expert who spent time treating soldiers at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. “We’re at the tip of the iceberg of understanding it. It is one of the most complicated injuries to one of the most complicated parts of the body.”
But the consequences of these concussions can be far-reaching, leading to financial problems, job losses, divorce and mental health issues. The ramifications often go unseen by the military because symptoms often worsen once veterans leave the structure of the Army or Marine Corps for the unpredictability of civilian life.
