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TABLE 2 Type of Trauma Injuries TABLE 4 Type of Nontraumatic Injuries
Traumatically Injured MWDs, Non–Traumatically Injured MWDs,
Resultant Injury No. % (N=36) Type of Injuries No. % (N = 48)
Hemorrhage 25 (9) Gastrointestinal 33 (16)
Airway 6 (2) Cancer 6 (3)
Thorax 8 (3) Abscess/infection 4 (2)
Abdominal trauma 22 (8) Behavior 13 (6)
Extremity injury 67 (24) Nontrauma orthopedic 21 (10)
Dental 11 (4) Cardiac 10 (5)
Facial 14 (5) Neurologic 6 (3)
Other 11 (4) Genitourinary 10 (5)
Dental 2 (1)
TABLE 3 Interventions Performed Environment 2 (1)
Traumatically Non–Traumatically Ingestion/toxicology 13 (6)
Injured MWDs, Injured MWDs, Spinal 4 (2)
Intervention No. % (N = 36) No. % (N = 48) Other 8 (4)
Analgesic 67 (24) 25 (12)
Antibiotic 31 (11) 17 (8) may be due to a lack of documentation especially at early stages
Sedative 25 (9) 10 (5) of evacuation, lack of knowledge or product to tourniquet an
Other medication 3 (1) 35 (17) MWD, or atomical location of hemorrhage. All of these pres-
IV fluids 28 (10) 31 (15) ent an issue and emphasize the importance of training nonvet-
Surgery 31 (11) 13 (6) erinary medical personnel on the basic care of MWDs. Of the
Casts and splints 25 (9) 0 (0) trauma MWDs, 67% recorded receiving analgesics, while only
Blood transfusion 14 (5) 0 (0) 25% of nontraumatic MWD group recorded analgesics. Car-
Hemorrhage control 6 (2) 0 (0) profen is commercially marketed for veterinary use only, which
Burn management 3 (1) 0 (0) may explain why this drug is not a part of military guidelines,
despite this being a common veterinary analgesic.
Addi-
6,10,12
Airway intervention 14 (5) 0 (0) tionally, dexmedetomidine, acepromazine, and medetomidine
Chest procedure 6 (2) 0 (0) are all used as sedatives, but these are not mentioned in either
Bandage 19 (7) 0 (0) guideline. 11,13 Compared to Reeves et al., we noted much higher
Wound closure 14 (5) 2 (1) use of sedative and analgesics, although this may be related to
Total 104 64 the differences in settings from which our data were drawn. 2
IV = intravenous.
Many of the studies analyzing injury patterns and inter-
Forty-eight (57%) MWDs incurred nontraumatic ailments. ventions have limited sample sizes, and data were obtained
The most common indications were gastrointestinal (33%), through different sources, which may lead to differences in
nontraumatic orthopedic (21%), behavioral, including post- findings. Most studies specifically analyze only trauma-related
traumatic stress disorder (13%), and ingestion/toxicologic injuries or only medical cases; therefore, our data will not be
(13%) (Table 4). Medications other than analgesics, sedatives, directly comparable to these studies. Our dataset included a
and antibiotics were the most common recorded intervention slightly higher percent of injuries due to trauma (42%) com-
for nontrauma MWDs (31%), followed by IV fluids (31%), pared to Mey et al.’s report of MWDs in Iraq which found
and analgesics (25%) (Table 3). that 33% of injured dogs were due to trauma. In contrast,
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the leading type of injury found in Mey et al.’s report was
gastrointestinal (39%) in nature, while only 19% of our dogs
Discussion
suffered gastrointestinal diseases/injuries/illnesses.
We identified 84 MWD encounters from CENTCOM within
the TRAC2ES data repository. Traumas occurred in 36 of the Our dataset included a significantly higher percentage of medi-
MWDs, while the rest were due to medical ailments. Of the cal cases (57% of total) than Miller et al.’s report on the causes
36 traumas, nine instances of hemorrhage occurred that re- of death in OIF and OEF (12%). Our dataset also included a
1
quired intervention, though this number is likely higher than much lower percentage of injuries due to GSWs (13% total)
documented due to the nature of traumatic injuries. In our compared to this report (32%). Additionally, our data only
dataset, traumas included 11 GSWs and eight blast injuries. had 10% of injuries due to blasts, while Miller et al.’s report
Of the nine hemorrhaging MWDs, only five recorded receiving had 26% – both of which are far lower than human casualties,
canine blood products. Four recorded IV fluids, and three re- for which explosives represent the preponderance. 14,15 These
corded neither. Human research strongly supports the concept statistics could be different because their report represents
that blood transfusions are much more effective for hemody- causes of death, while our report is about the etiologies and
namics and result in better outcomes in trauma patients. The interventions performed. As previously stated, there were zero
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Canine-Tactical Combat Casualty Care Guidelines (K9 TCCC) confirmed deaths in our report, which suggests that our data-
instruct the use of blood products over crystalloids for MWDs set may be skewed by survival bias which is further supported
in hemorrhagic shock. Additionally, only two instances of by the nature of using transportation data. In other words,
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hemorrhage control other than use of fluids were recorded. someone must survive long enough to be transported for an
This disparity in hemorrhage control compared to hemorrhage entry to be generated.

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