Surveying the Damage

The Pentagon's set up a special registry to track causalty information from the wars in Iraw and Afghanistan. The data will help the military decide what works and doesn't. It will affect things like designing future protective gear and how to better deliver medical attention on the battlefield. The Joint Theater Trauma Registry details wounds received, treatment given, how field hospitals worked and what the long term results were on wounded troops. The data shows how effective combat care is. In past wars, about 25% of those wounded in combat died. In the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, only 10% of the wounded have died. (DoD)