It was not until 1993 that the military began to actively research combat casualty death from potentially survivable injuries and redesign its combat medical training to meet the needs. The Battle of the Black Sea (popularized by the movie Black Hawk Down) proved to be the impetus for tactical combat casualty care (TC3) and the basis on which current prehospital medical theory operates. [26] It was implemented in the military special operations community in 1996. TC3 is a set of prehospital trauma treatment guidelines that are customized for use in combat and other non-permissive environments. (CENTCOM citation)
The result of that training and research became apparent in 2001, almost a decade later. From 2001 to 2010, a research study was conducted to evaluate the effect of TC3 treatment modalities and the focus on evaluation and treatment of the three preventable causes of death on the battlefield. The goal was to eliminate preventable death on the battlefield, and the study showed promising results. Currently, there is an unprecedented 90% survival rate for injured U.S. soldiers in the overseas combat theater of Afghanistan; this is in comparison to 84% seen in Vietnam and the 80% in World War II. As of 2013, the rate of mortality of soldiers in the Eastridge study from extremity hemorrhage is 2.6%. [19]
