Ukraine A Deadly Mistake: Overuse of Tourniquets Is Crippling Ukraine

[Social Media]

 

A Deadly Mistake: How Overuse of Tourniquets Is Crippling Ukraine’s Soldiers

 

Tourniquets, once hailed as a revolutionary life-saving tool on the battlefield, are now being blamed for a tragic surge in preventable amputations and deaths among Ukrainian soldiers. According to leading military surgeons, widespread misuse of the device in Ukraine has created a “cult-like” dependence that is leaving thousands of young men permanently disabled.

 

Captain Rom A Stevens, a retired senior US Navy medical officer who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and East Africa, estimates that of the roughly 100,000 amputations performed on Ukrainian soldiers since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, as many as 75,000 could have been avoided. “I’ve seen tourniquets that have been left on for days, often for injuries that could have been stopped by other methods. Then [the patient] has to have their limb amputated because the tissue has died,” he told The Telegraph.

 

Tourniquets are tight bands used to stop catastrophic bleeding by cutting off blood flow, a last resort intended for life-threatening injuries. If applied correctly and for a short time, they can be invaluable. But left in place for longer than two hours, they begin to starve tissue of oxygen, resulting in irreversible damage and ultimately amputation.

 

In the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where tourniquets became standard issue for Western forces in the 2000s, wounded soldiers could typically be evacuated by helicopter to surgical care within an hour. If a tourniquet turned out to be unnecessary, it could be quickly removed with no lasting harm. Ukraine presents a very different battlefield. With the skies thick with enemy drones and helicopters largely grounded, soldiers must be transported by land, often over long distances. These delays can extend well past the critical safe window for tourniquet use.

 

According to Captain Stevens, the consequences are not limited to lost limbs. He noted a growing number of young Ukrainian men now requiring dialysis because, after a tourniquet is left on too long, the removal releases toxins from the dead tissue into the bloodstream, overwhelming the kidneys. Stevens, who has been volunteering in hospitals in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, and L’viv since the start of the invasion, said, “It has left a generation of men traumatised by unnecessary amputations.”

 

Captain Stevens was involved in creating the U.S. military’s own guidelines on tourniquet use and now regrets that they didn’t stress enough the importance of determining whether one is truly necessary before applying it. He believes the success of tourniquets in previous conflicts has blinded many to their risks. “Their successful use in wars where rapid evacuation was possible has led to a ‘cult-like’ dependence on a tool that should be used much more sparingly,” he warned.

 

Backing up his concerns is a 2022 study by Dr Vladyslav Yatsun, a Ukrainian military vascular surgeon, who found that just 24.6 percent of wounded soldiers arriving at hospitals with tourniquets had injuries that actually required them. “In all other cases, the use of pressure bandages was more appropriate,” the study concluded.

 

As the war grinds on and casualty numbers rise, experts are calling for an urgent re-education of frontline medics and soldiers on when and how to use tourniquets. Without it, thousands more may face avoidable amputations, lifelong disability, and death—not from enemy fire, but from a well-intended device misused in the chaos of war.

 

  Adapted by ASEAN Now from Source Daily Telegraph  2025-08-06

 

 

[MicroB]

This has been observed in previous conflicts. If its happening in Ukraine, it's most assuredly happening in the Russian army. The Telegraph journalist should research rather better.

 

As long ago as 1945, the use of tournequets in combat fell out of favor secondary to excessive use for minor injuries and prolonged application without conversion, resulting in excessive harm. TQs were largely not used in Korea and Vietnam. US Navy SEALS reintroduced tactical TQs on ops in 1996. Even so, prior to going into Afghanistan, the US military had received little training on the TQ. But by 2006, it was in widespread use. The SEAL surgeons found that lack of use of then TQ in Vietnam lead to unecessary deaths. The Navy SEAL Medical Research program estimated that at least 3,400 men bled to death in Vietnam due to lack of use of a TQ.

 

Some surgeon images on the combat application of TQs

 

Combat, minimal injury, TQ requiring conversion

 

 

This injury had a TQ in place for 5 hours, was not amenible to TQ conversion.

 

 

Traumatic amputation, TQ conversion not possible

 

These examples are from Ukraine. Extended fitment of TQs is not to do with "a cult of TQs"

 

Captain Stevens is inconsistant. Battlefield evacuations in Iraq and Afghanistan were achieved typically within an hour. I had first hand knowledge of the superb facilities at Bagram, and the subsequent C17 flying hospitals. The Ukraine is a different kettle of fish. Amputations are not, in the main, due to Ukrainian inappropriate use of the TQ but because battlefield evacuations are typically more than 6 hours.

 

In WW2, issues with TQs were recognised, leading to medics specifically marking casualties in large letters that a TQ was fitted.

 

The Americans, and the British, have no comparable recent experience to what the Ukrainians are experiencing; they are rediscovering WW2 style combat. Neither the US nor British forces have experienced true total combat since 1945. Its a pretty consistant pattern in military medicine that lessons are constantly learnt and forgotten; you can go back to Alfred Keogh's anguished writings on the suffering of the wounded Tommy in the Boer War, where disease killed more men than bullets. 20 years later. He went out the South Africa as a newly promoted Major, came back just a few years later a General, largely due to his efforts in Parliament to raise the issue. In WW1, he was put in charge of the Provosts, and they had the same problems all over again, this time with trench foot. Trench Foot was a problem again in 1982, with lessons forgotten/ The biggest killer of men in Afghanistan, after IEDs? It wasn't bullets. It was sepsis, aka blood poisoning.

 

The Telegraph article is twisted, taking a notably anti-Ukrainian line, as if the Ukrainians are uniquely acting inappropriately. They are not. We would have done exactly the same, learned the same exact lessons. And some bright spark with pips on his shoulder would have started spouting the same old military maxim/excuse, Operational Pragmatism.

 

British biomedical engineers are at the forefront of developing  a technical solution, using a new type of tournequet combined with a device that cools the affected limb, increasing the chances of saving it. Its presence though is academic, in the midst of a war that the planet hasn;t seen the like of for 80 years.

 

 

[Tug]

Sad the Ukrainians have to defend themselves from putins criminals.I for one cannot imagine having to defend my home from an invading hoard of looting rapists as the Ukrainian people have to .hopefully they will get better training to address this problem.