[Biomechanical and clinical study of gunshot wounds (general problems). I]

Above and beyond their effective epidemiological incidence, which is perhaps somewhat greater than is commonly imagined even outside the war context, gunshot wounds constitute a unique cultural opportunity for the traumatologist and for surgeons in general. The actual morphological and clinical features of such wounds, which bear precise, localized witness to, and reflect in a virtually mathematical manner, a programmed, and thus readily quantifiable, dimension of kinetic energy (rich in experimental implications), stand out against the backcloth of an extremely extensive involvement of the body in which, amongst other things, the intervention of a whole host of mediators may be seen to play a decisive role. Lastly, it should not be forgotten that it is precisely in field hospitals or their equivalents that surgery has found a precious opportunity to escape the environmental or "cultural" conditioning of the moment and play a leading role not only in terms of technological solutions but also in terms of reflection on the main leitmotive of pathophysiology, from shock to ARDS.