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What happens when thousands of healthy young men and women return from combat with altered abilities? Since the American Civil War, governments have been actively involved in a long process to return veterans with disabilities to productive, active lives. 

In the beginning the focus was on offering those who survived their injuries medical devices and pensions, then work, and finally, a focus on quality of life and sport. Every war offers new technologies in protection and life-saving medical advances, all to counteract the new and different mechanisms that create the damages to soldiers.

With each war, including current ones, medical advances have changed the type of injuries that wounded warriors can sustain and still survive. The medical goal of saving the lives of those fighting at all costs has not changed, but the abilities of those who survive have changed over the decades. For these young men and women, their goal has not been just surviving the disability, but the return to happy, productive, and active lives.

Historically, different wars provided medical advances that have created a diverse population of veterans with disabilities. This list shows a few of the groups of soldiers who survived their war injuries with different functional ability losses, who owe their quality of life to technological advances.

• American Civil War—30,000+ veterans survived with amputations
• World War I—continuation of soldiers surviving with amputations, this time affecting populations in many different countries
• World War II—soldiers survived with thoracic wounds and spinal cord injuries
• Korean and Vietnam Wars—soldiers with high-velocity penetrating brain injuries survived
• Iraq war—soldiers acquiring closed head injuries.