[Injured soldiers and their quality of life]

This is a commentary on the article entitled 'Dutch military casualties of the war in Afghanistan - Quality of life and level of participation after rehabilitation' by de Kruijff and colleagues, published in the Dutch Journal of Medicine (Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, NTvG). The article addresses a very relevant issue: the impact of war injuries on a wounded soldier's recovery, quality of life and level of participation after rehabilitation. The choice was made to compare soldiers wounded during their mission in Uruzgan with the Dutch general trauma population by means of the 'Injury Severity Score' (ISS) and the 'Abbreviated Injury Scale' (AIS) score. As mechanisms of trauma in the military setting (e.g. war injuries such as blast and penetrating trauma; blunt trauma in civilians), their resulting injuries and their psychological context differ strongly from those encountered in the Dutch general population, the question arises whether such a comparison is the optimal choice. We encourage the authors to follow up on this study and in doing so, to correct for type of injury and to integrate findings from the military-psychology field of expertise into the outcome.