Gas Gangrene in New South Wales

Gas gangrene, previously a scourge of military medicine, has now been relegated to civilian surgical practice, and though usually considered as rare, can occur following trauma, particularly compound fractures with muscle ischæmia, surgical operations and septic abortions. Since the introduction of the three-pronged therapeutic regime of high-dosage antibiotics, surgical debridement and hyperbaric oxygenation, the mortality has been dramatically reduced, but attempts to reduce the incidence in civilian surgical practice have not been so successful.