Neurosurgeon Caja de Salud de la Banca Privada / Hospital San Juan de Dios Santa Cruz, Bolivia
Introduction: Bolivia and Paraguay began fighting over ownership of the Gran Chaco, a vast, hostile, and desert region between them, in the mid-nineteenth century. It was South America's most important war of the twentieth century. Bolivia mobilized 250,000 soldiers in three years, while Paraguay mobilized 120,000, with significant casualties (60,000 Bolivians and 30,000 Paraguayans) According to historian Juan Miguel Balcazar, "the Chaco War was a true field of experimentation for surgery." To save wounded and sick soldiers, all doctors had to become surgeons.
Methods: The book "REPAIR SURGERY FOR INJURIES OF THE PERIPHERAL NERVES," written by the physicians Abelardo Ibañez Benavente and Valentin Gomez and published by the Bolivian Government in 1936, was subjected to a descriptive analysis and bibliographic review.
Results: 176 cases in 151 patients with nerve damage with most of those cases occurring in the upper limbs are described. Nerve lesions are defined by terms such as "contusion" and "complete" or "incomplete section." Dr. Ibaez Benavente discusses the diagnosis of war wounds, surgical and clinical follow-up, anti-infection care, wound investigation, and the surgical technique that will be used, with a special emphasis on end-to-end sutures and neurolysis, in 126 pages.
Conclusion : We present a beautiful monograph that describes 176 peripheral nerve surgeries performed during the Chaco War. We regard this work as revolutionary for its time (1932-1936), taking into account anesthesia limitations, the discovery and use of antibiotics, and even knowledge of nerve injury Seddon (1943) and Sunderland (1951)
