Ukrainian military medical teams have noted an increase in the number of cases of gangrene caused by a bacterial infection among wounded soldiers, which is historically associated mainly with trench warfare during the First World War and has since almost disappeared in Europe, wrote the British newspaper The Telegraph, writes TASR.
The infection, which rapidly destroys muscle tissue, emerged mainly due to the demanding conditions of modern trench warfare and the deployment of drones – they often make it impossible to evacuate wounded soldiers in time. Meanwhile, the conditions in the trenches are causing infections that were once a thing of the past to spread at an alarming rate.
“In the case of injuries, we are witnessing such complications as none of the living people have seen during the war,” said Alex, a foreign volunteer working in the Zaporozhye region in the southeast of Ukraine.
Gas gangrene is a serious muscle infection caused mainly by the bacterium Clostridium. It is named after the gas bubbles that form under the skin. These bacteria thrive in unoxygenated, dead tissue, causing the patient severe pain, swelling, tissue discoloration, and a sense of internal pressure as gas builds up under the skin.
Common gangrene is usually the result of poor blood flow, does not involve bacterial toxins or gas formation, and develops much more slowly than gas gangrene, The Telegraph explained. Gas gangrene usually occurs after traumatic injuries such as deep gunshot wounds or explosive woundsespecially in cases where medical care is delayed, which is common in Ukraine.
“People come to the hospital who have been injured for several weeks,” said Alex, adding that these people often stay in underground so-called stabilization points and “are kept alive as best we can”.
These underground spaces are often poorly equipped and the impossibility of quick evacuation leads to unnecessary deaths. “We see a lot of people with injuries that are usually survivable – amputations or cases requiring only a transfusion – but those people die in the field because we can’t evacuate them in time,” added Alex.
Treatment of gas gangrene is complex and success is not guaranteed even in the best hospitals. It requires surgical removal of the infected tissue and strong intravenous antibiotics. Without treatment, the mortality rate is almost 100 percent, pointed out Dr. Lindsey Edwards of King’s College London.
At the same time, Edwards said that conditions on the front often make quick surgical interventions or targeted administration of antibiotics impossible. “In a field hospital, you can’t test microbes or detect drug resistance,” she explained. The increase in bacterial resistance to antibiotics makes treatment even more complicatedvolunteer Alex also admitted.
Gas gangrene is historically associated with World War I due to harsh battlefield conditions, severe injuries, and limited medical care. Soldiers then fought in muddy trenches and on fields often fertilized with manure – in both cases Clostridium bacteria were found there.
Bullets or shrapnel caused deep wounds to the soldiers with the subsequent death of the tissue, which created an ideal environment for the multiplication of bacteria. Evacuation and surgery often came late, moreover, antibiotics did not exist at that time.
