Difficult situations at the front cause wounded people to wait too long for help, which increases the risk of gas gangrene. Considered lethal, the infection had been eradicated in Europe before the war.
Soldiers on the front line, like in the war in Ukraine, thave to wait for help for long periods, because evacuation, and therefore urgent medical care, may simply be impossible.
This exposes combatants to the risk of contracting gas gangrenea dangerous disease that starts in dead tissue and causes gas bubbles to form under the skin.
What seems like a horror story from ancient wars is becoming reality in Ukraine. According to a report in the British newspaper, the gas gangrene is spreading across the country.
“We learned about gas gangrene at school, but we see it now in Ukraine because the injured are not receiving adequate care,” Alex, a volunteer paramedic working in the Zaporizhia region, told the newspaper. “People who have been injured for weeks arrive at the hospital, who were in underground medical stabilization rooms, where they were kept alive in an improvised way.”
It has not yet been independently verified whether the disease spreading among Ukrainian soldiers it is in fact gas gangrene. But it is undeniable that the battlefront is difficult to access due to frequent Russian drone attacks.
Os supplies often do not reach the troopsor arrive extremely late. New soldiers sometimes have to walk kilometers before reaching the battlefronts, where the wounded await help.
Or what causes gas gangrene
Toxic infectious disease quickly destroys muscle tissue. It is caused by bacteria of the genus Clostridiumnaturally present, for example, in the soil or in the human intestine, explains .
These bacteria are not necessarily pathogenic. They only become dangerous when they enter tissues lacking oxygen, as occurs in deep and complex wounds. Dead, or necrotic, tissue prevents the wound from healing, favoring the proliferation of bacteria Clostridium.
A infection spreads quickly in conditions such as those found in the trenches, where there are many injuries and poor hygiene.
For those affected, gas gangrene is extremely painful. Gas bubbles form under the skin, which can be felt and heard crackling when palpating the area around the wound. Affected muscles turn grayish-red and swell.
Infected soldiers develop sépsiso heart rate acceleratesappear circulatory and respiratory problems and, finally, multiple organ failure.
Even with hospital treatment, a cure is not guaranteed once the disease has developed. Without treatment — for example, due to excessively long evacuation times — the mortality rate approaches 100%.
The affected tissue must be surgically removed as quickly as possible. Potent antibiotics should also be administered intravenously. To identify the most appropriate antibiotics for each patient, microbiological cultures are performed and tested for resistance.
These procedures require impeccable hygiene conditions and they can only be carried out in hospitals with laboratories, not in makeshift treatment rooms in bomb shelters. Although some antibiotics can be stored in these shelters, there are no alternatives if there is resistance to these drugs.
It was gas gangrene considered practically eradicated in Europe due to advances in medicine, especially in antibiotics.
In World War I, many wounded soldiers died from the disease. It is believed that more than 100 thousand German fighters have succumbed to this infection.
At the time, many injured soldiers remained untreated for long periods in muddy trenches, and wound care and hygiene were non-existent.
In World War II, gas gangrene was a much less significant problem. You antibiotics were already widespread enoughalthough still not as common as today — and, contrary to what happens today, at that time the antibiotic resistance it was not a significant problem.
