Picture Of The Day - 01 OCT 2010 "Jitter"

01 OCT 2010 - Jitter

In 2001, the US military was called upon to place large numbers of servicemen and women in harms way. Its medical leadership recognized that much work needed to be done to meet with the standards that had been developed over the previous 30 years in the US Trauma system. Thus the development of a "Joint Theater Trauma System" (JTTS) was initiated and patterned after its civilian counterpart. This was an enormous undertaking and much too complicated to be adequately explained in this small space. However, suffice it to say that the effort has lead to the most sophisticated delivery of advanced medical and surgical care ever in the history of our military.

A huge part of this effort lies in the collection and analysis of the data concerning the wounding and subsequent treatment of our soldiers. The U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, under the leadership of Col. John B. Holcomb (now retired), developed the Joint Theater Trauma Registry (JTTR AKA "jitter"). This information is thoughtfully reviewed and has become the backbone of military medical advances in battlefield casualty management, in the same way that hospital, system, regional, state and national registries are in the civilian sector. All of this analysis starts with the information collected by our medical teams as seen in the photo above. Your work IS important!