VA trauma center treats most grievously wounded troops

VA trauma center treats most grievously wounded troops
The Palo Alto facility is among four nationwide in which physicians and therapists take a team approach to care for those who have suffered amputations and other catastrophic injuries, many from bomb blasts.

By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times
June 5, 2011
Reporting from Palo Alto— Marine Lance Cpl. Jorge Ortiz is in pain.

Marine Lance Cpl. Jorge Ortiz, 19, of Fresno, who stepped on a buried explosive in Afghanistan, rests in the hospital. The blast ripped off his legs, snapped off four fingers on his left hand and his right thumb. (Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times / June 5, 2011)

A combat photographer, Ortiz was taking pictures of a captured weapons cache in Sangin, Afghanistan, on Jan. 15 when he stepped on a buried explosive device.

The blast ripped off his legs above the knees and snapped off four fingers on his left hand and the thumb on his right hand.

Classified as a triple amputee, Ortiz is now an inpatient at the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto — one of four VA centers nationwide staffed and equipped specifically to treat the most grievously wounded U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The centers have become a key element in caring for the wounded as the war in Afghanistan enters its second decade and the injured from Iraq continue to need care. They are the result of important medical insights gleaned from the long wars in the Middle East — that modern battlefield injuries, particularly those from bomb blasts, require a team approach from physicians and therapists.
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VA trauma center treats most grievously wounded troops