Combined Radiation Injuries and Medical Preparedness

Abstract

An understanding of combined injuries caused by both whole-body irradiation and wounds or burns is still at the present, in a clinical sense, largely lacking. This is, in part, due to the fact that Japanese and American scientists paid attention mainly to the individual injuries, especially those of subjects with acute radiation diseases, which had not been observed until then. Under the threat of a global nuclear confrontation, an intensive radiation biological investigation was initiated, especially in the military laboratories in the USA, the European countries, and the Soviet Union. The study of combined injuries, however, was relatively neglected. This may be because many investigators have considered combined injuries to be just modified radiation injuries, for which the same treatment principles are valid, that apply to radiation diseases.