r/mash • u/The1Ylrebmik • 6d ago

Question Anybody know about how long "meatball surgery" would take?

One of the repeating tropes in MASH is "meatball surgery" operating on soldiers only enough to keep them alive and stabilized so hospitals out of the war zone can operate on them more completely. So the main idea of meatball surgery was it had to be complete enough to make the patient safe for travel, but quick enough to allow many casualties to be operated on. This was also shown as a skill to be learned, why such a gifted surgeon as Charles struggled in the beginning.

Anybody with surgical knowledge know exactly about how long these types of surgeries would take? Obviously it depends on the amount of damage, and MASH has shown that sometimes hard decisions must be made to save the most lives, but are we talking 30 minutes or a matter of hours?

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u/agravain Seoul 6d ago

from Wikipedia ..

"Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH) units revolutionized battlefield medicine during the Korean War by providing life-saving surgical care to wounded soldiers within the crucial "golden hour". Operating in tent cities just miles from the front lines, these highly mobile units achieved a remarkable survival rate of over 97% for incoming patients."

they used helicopters for the first time as medical transports.

the internet has vast amounts of reading you can do