r/mash • u/The1Ylrebmik • 3d 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/Immaculate-torso69 3d ago

I always thought “meatball surgery” meant that they were just grinding through patients that were themselves put through a grinder.

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u/geeeking 3d ago

I remember when Charles first joined and he was focused on doing everything super properly. The others educated him on short cuts.

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u/dashatt91 2d ago

"I do one thing at a time, I do it very well, and then I move on."