Crush injuries can occur in many potentially surprising situations, and yet not many people know much about them.
What should you know about crush injuries? How can they occur and what problems can they cause?
Full-body crush injuries
Up To Date discusses crush injuries in victims. Crush injuries occur in any situation where part of the body ends up crushed by a larger, heavier object. This can include anything from someone driving over a person’s foot with their truck, to a building collapsing with someone inside during an earthquake.
All crush injuries are automatically quite severe. However, some are much direr than others. Crush injuries that involve the full body, such as those that occur in natural disasters and building collapses, have a much lower survival rate. These victims need help immediately in order for the best shot at recovery.
In other situations, crush injuries sometimes stay localized to either a trunk crush injury or an extremity crush injury.
Crush injuries to the trunk
Each of these injuries has its own potential risks. Trunk crush injuries involve crushes to the torso. The biggest risk with these is the risk of organ failure and shut down. When blood does not circulate properly in the torso, organs begin to fail. The ones left start to overwork and fail, too.
Extremity crushes
On the other hand, crush injuries to the extremities often result in a risk of infection, gangrene, and necrosis of the skin. This could even lead to sepsis, which can cause death within 72 hours of symptoms appearing in some forms.
Either of these is potentially fatal, and all require immediate medical care.
