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I'm having a hard time seeing how my husband is going to recover from a wound he received in Iraq. Half of the lower leg is simply missing. I can't say this to him but given the number of surgeries they are saying it will take to reconstruct the leg, I can't help but wonder if it will be worth all the time, energy, effort, and pain.
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More than 75 per cent of all combat injuries are to the limbs from explosions. Fractures, bone infections, and loss of soft tissue mass create chronic disability. Experts from the military Skeletal Trauma Research Consortium are studying the problem of volumetric muscle loss or VML.
Volumetric muscle loss (VML) is defined as the loss of skeletal muscle and function from trauma or surgery. Although the focus is on combat-related extremity wounds, nonmilitary personnel (i.e., civilians) can experience the same type of injuries from high-energy trauma.
Even with the best of care, sometimes these injuries still create many disabling problems. With so many war injuries affecting the lower extremity (limb), military medicine is taking a closer look at volumetric muscle loss.
They have discovered that even after extensive reconstructive surgeries, many soldiers choose to have the leg amputated. They find that living without the weak, painful leg is actually easier than trying to work around all the functional deficits.
But not very many people choose this path without first giving every effort to saving the limb. Hence, there is a long season of surgeries and rehab. In the meantime, scientists are studying ways to help tissue regenerate itself. Success in this area of study (called regenerative medicine) would be very helpful in cases of lost muscle mass.
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