The exhibition of the Military Medical Museum contains the service bucket hat that used to belong to Ivan Kosachev, the 40th Army Head Surgeon. The bucket hats of this kind were part of the military uniform worn by the representatives of the USSR Ministry of Defense in hot climate countries. This uniform was a modification of the standard military uniform. It consisted of a bucket hat, a light sand-colored military jacket and a short-sleeved shirt.
Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Ivan Kosachev in the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979–1989 served in the 40th Combined Arms Army of the Limited Contingent of the Soviet Union. Shortly before leaving for Afghanistan, he completed his doctoral thesis on combined battlefield injuries. The results of Kosachev’s research were frequently used in the military medical combat support.
Facing the hot Afghan climate and ongoing military operations, Kosachev looked for ways to improve the quality of medical aid. He developed new methods for organizing military field hospitals — first of all, he established new rules for the medical triage of the wounded. The so-called hopeless patients — soldiers who usually had fatal injuries — got his special attention. Kosachev sent patients in critical condition to the operating room as soon as possible. He managed to save more than half of the soldiers who were considered fatally injured.
Kosachev also opened intensive care units in military field hospitals, organized a surgical unit for dressing the wounds of the patients with infectious diseases. This arrangement enabled him to reduce the number of complications among the patients with typhus fever by several times, as well as significantly de crease mortality from infections.
Kosachev personally examined the wounded, as well as supervised many surgeries in the field. He was the first to develop the methods of treating mine blast injuries, which amounted to 25% of all battlefield wounds in the 40th Army in 1985. He used his combat experience to write and publish in 1986 a monograph “Blast Injuries” on the classification and treatment of battlefield wounds.
Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor Ivan Kosachev in the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979–1989 served in the 40th Combined Arms Army of the Limited Contingent of the Soviet Union. Shortly before leaving for Afghanistan, he completed his doctoral thesis on combined battlefield injuries. The results of Kosachev’s research were frequently used in the military medical combat support.
Facing the hot Afghan climate and ongoing military operations, Kosachev looked for ways to improve the quality of medical aid. He developed new methods for organizing military field hospitals — first of all, he established new rules for the medical triage of the wounded. The so-called hopeless patients — soldiers who usually had fatal injuries — got his special attention. Kosachev sent patients in critical condition to the operating room as soon as possible. He managed to save more than half of the soldiers who were considered fatally injured.
Kosachev also opened intensive care units in military field hospitals, organized a surgical unit for dressing the wounds of the patients with infectious diseases. This arrangement enabled him to reduce the number of complications among the patients with typhus fever by several times, as well as significantly de crease mortality from infections.
Kosachev personally examined the wounded, as well as supervised many surgeries in the field. He was the first to develop the methods of treating mine blast injuries, which amounted to 25% of all battlefield wounds in the 40th Army in 1985. He used his combat experience to write and publish in 1986 a monograph “Blast Injuries” on the classification and treatment of battlefield wounds.
