Triage of war-injured troops in the Iran-Iraq War

Background: this study compared the triage of iran-iraq war-injured troops within the first two years of the war withthat after the first two years.methods: this was a retrospective study, which compared the triage of the admissions for abdominal injuries duringthe first two years of the iran-iraq war with that in the next 6 years. out of nearly 50,000 cases, 1,176 ones were randomlyselected and their triage information was recorded and analyzed.results: about 12.5% of patients were operated on within less than 8 hours during the first two years. from 1982 towardsthe end of the conflict (1988), the patients were treated within progressively shorter periods of sustaining injury;68.8% were operated on within less than 4 hours of injury. the meande1ay between injury and treatment in the first twoyears of war was 12 hours while it was 5 hours between 1982 and 1988. the difference was significant (p<0.05) but themortality rate was not significantly different.conclusions: patient triage was conducted differently at various stages of conflict. better patient triage after 1982,may have been due to improved care and more specialized triage of injured troops.