Surgical skills of the Mash surgeons

[Best Man]

Forgetting that (outside of documantary eps like the 1952 reallife Olympic footage featured in the Mash Olympics ep) Mash was only a tv show I wish to offer my theory using reallife logic on how skilled the Mash surgeons were. This is based on observation of the characters throughout many eps.

1)Hawkeye--98% survival rate of patients. Popular personality keeps him ahead of Charles as chief surgeon.

2)Trapper--94% survival rate of patients

3)Frank Burns--75% survival rate of patients

4)Charles Emerson Winchester--98.5% survival rate of patients

5)Henry Blake--88% survival rate of patients (why he is tolerable to Frank's limited abilities as Henry is vastly inferior to Hawk and Trap himself as a surgeon)

6)BJ--93 soon 94% survival rate of patients

7)Spearchucker Jones--85% surviaval rate of patients.

8)Sherman Potter--89% survival rate of patients

[Mr. Television]

so Frank was the worst doctor? 25 % of his patients died?

[Best Man]

Originally Posted by Clint Eastwood Fan

so Frank was the worst doctor? 25 % of his patients died?

As I said most of Mash was only fiction and this is a guess based on what we saw on the show. But Hawk and Beej occasionally lost a patient so their surgical skills were not 100% successful either. Henry was good at meatball surgery but note he was distinctly inferior to either Hawk and Trap so he must have had a significantly lower survival patient rate than either of them (with them both almost at 100% its safe to assume he was at the upper 80's in percentage of patient savings). Hawk accused Frank in a trial ep of creating more widows than salamonella (sp?) with Frank's alleged medical skills (as Hawk more or less put it). Frank was indeed below Henry in skill so the former's patient survival rate could indeed be only 75-78%, but remember that is at least a three times more survival than death rate!

[TJL]

I don't know, i think Henry was a pretty good surgeon.

[Best Man]

Originally Posted by TJL

I don't know, i think Henry was a pretty good surgeon.

I got the feeling Henry was a better surgeon when he was doing regular more conventional surgey, meatball surgery is harder to master! Note in the pilot Gen. Hammond talks of Trap and Hawk making him (Hammond) feel like a horse doctor after the general performed meatball surgery with them. Hammond didn't say Henry along with Trap and Hawk made him feel this way. Henry was written to be distinctly below H+T in meatball surgery skills and Frank is below Henry!