Not many people have to deal with crush injuries on a daily basis. However, they are not as far removed from an average person as they may suspect.
Crush injuries can happen to anyone at any time, so it is important to understand what causes them and what happens because of them.
How do crush injuries happen?
Up To Date discusses crush injury impacts on victims. It also discusses the cause of a crush injury. Many people mistakenly believe that crush injuries only occur on construction sites or in industrial settings where many pieces of heavy machinery and equipment undergo daily use.
This is not true, though. A crush injury can occur in any situation where heavy, large objects and humans co-exist. For example, if someone runs over a person’s foot with their truck, this constitutes a crush injury. If an earthquake happens and a person ends up buried beneath the rubble, this could also result in a crush injury.
Big risk factors
Crush injuries can have numerous risky impacts on a victim’s health and well-being. Two of the most common issues include infection and organ failure. Both can occur because of the blood and oxygen supply getting cut off to certain parts of the body.
In the event of organ failure, a victim’s organs may end up overworking due to the changes in blood pressure and oxygen levels. As other organs start to fail, the remaining ones have more work to do and will soon fail, too.
As for infections, due to the quick death of tissue with no oxygen – necrosis – bacteria like gangrene easily make a home and wreak havoc. Victims can even develop sepsis. Septic shock in particular can kill a victim in under 72 hours, highlighting just how dangerous this injury is.