Sucking chest wound sealed and intubated

Gruesome footage shows the reality of combat injuries and the simple but ingenious life-saving medical techniques that have been developed to treat them. In this instance, a Ukrainian soldier has a gunshot wound that entered his chest and exited through his back.His injury, an open pneumothorax, commonly referred to as a sucking chest wound, allowed outside air into his chest cavity, which then created enough pressure to collapse the already damaged lung, advancing the condition into tension pneumothorax, fatal if not treated.In any war prior to GWOT, this man would have likely died on the battlefield within a few minutes to hours, but due to advances in combat trauma techniques and higher levels of first-aid training bestowed on average infantry soldiers, this man's buddies were able to buy him several more hours to reach a higher level of care. In short, they applied chest seals to the wounds, which will allow no further air into the chest cavity.However, the air that did get inside the chest is still collapsing the lung. The soldier is rushed to a field hospital, where he is intubated with improvised materials (plastic water bottle and some tubing). The surgeon makes an incision into the torso and inserts the chest tube into the pleural space between the ribs and the lung. The other end of the tube is then placed inside a sealed plastic bottle, submerged in water. Each time the soldier breathes, it pushes some of the trapped air out of the pleural space, down the tube, and into the bottle. The water inside the bottle ensures the air cannot reverse direction and enter the body. Incredible stuff.

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