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Surgeons Experience It All In Treating Wounded Soldiers

Lt. Col. Guillermo Tellez, chief of the surgery division at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

Michael Egger/News Channel 8

By KEITH CATE kcate@wfla.com

Published: Nov 17, 2005

LANDSTUHL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER, Germany - Until last year, Lt. Col. Guillermo Tellez was stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa.

Now, Tellez is chief of the surgery division at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. There, wounded soldiers are brought from Iraq for the kind of stabilizing care they need before making the journey back home.

The hours are long. The wounds the doctors treat are often horrific.

The improvised explosive devices used by the Iraqi insurgents produce shrapnel that tears into the flesh, severing limbs, causing devastating head injuries.

The surgeons at Landstuhl are charged with saving men and women who would likely have died of such injuries in earlier wars. The trip from the battlefield to the operating room in Germany is a long one -- about 2,200 miles and two time zones, with multiple stops in between.

The pace for the doctors and medical staff is grueling. As many as 80 surgeons are on call, around the clock.

"It can be very busy, and it can be emotionally and physically trying," Tellez says. "We see it all."

Seeing it all means serious head injuries and blindness. It means amputations and paralysis. Sometimes, it means death -- although Tellez points out that most of the patients who arrive at Landstuhl alive leave the hospital alive.

"Very few patients die on our service," he says. "They stay with us anywhere from two to four days, and then they're gone and on to Walter Reed or Andrews [or] to the burn center in San Antonio.

"And then, we wait for our next group of folks to come in."

Keith Cate