Conditions of wounded IDF soldiers improves in hospital

• Published date: 27 September 2021
• Author: ANNA AHRONHEIM
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"They got the most advanced medical treatment in the world," the senior officer said. "Those two men, anywhere else in the world, would have likely died before getting to the hospital. The chances of getting to the hospital alive was really small."

Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, where the two men are being treated, announced Monday that their conditions were improving. One of them regained consciousness and is expected to be removed from a ventilator, and has communicated with his family. The other is scheduled to undergo a lengthy operation for his wounds.

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The two troops, a platoon commander and his soldier, were seriously injured during a firefight in the West Bank village of Burqin when they engaged armed Palestinian terrorists. The IDF's preliminary investigation is looking into the circumstances surrounding their injuries but is leaning towards the possibility that they were injured by friendly fire.

One of the men was shot in the chest and lost one of his lungs while the other man was shot in the jaw and stomach. The two are also suffering from shrapnel wounds.

"They were very seriously injured... and from the moment they were shot, the 18-year-old EMT-P went straight to treat them. The time we have to get to an injured person and give them medical treatment is seconds," the officer said, adding that while "most armies around the world have their paramedics in the back, in the IDF they are in the front."

According to the officer, Sgt. T controlled the hemorrhaging of the soldiers to stop their bleeding, performed a chest drainage, and intubated one of the men. The paramedic also did three additional things that saved the lives of the troops: he provided freeze-dried plasma, gave them TXA, and actively decided only to intubate one of them.

The powdered, freeze-dried plasma given to the troops helped to clot their blood and prevented the badly wounded men from bleeding to death on the battlefield. TXA (Tranexamic acid) meanwhile helps to stabilize the patient by coagulating the blood. Both were carried in the vest of the paramedic.

Then he chose to go outside the protocol and not to do something.

"Our reflex is to go to someone who is severely injured and intubate them. But, what we've found over the last decade is that...