Crush injuries can have a serious impact on a person’s health. Many crush injuries result in life-long disabilities or even death.
How do they happen? What are the biggest potential risks that accompany them?
What causes crush injuries?
Up To Date discusses how crush injuries happen and manifest. Crush injuries typically happen as a result of a person’s body ending up run over, pinned, compressed or otherwise flattened by a larger or heavier object or set of objects.
Many different things can cause a crush injury to happen. For example, if a construction worker does not see his fellow employee standing nearby and runs over their foot with a truck, this counts as a crush injury.
Natural disasters like hurricanes, tornados, tsunamis and earthquakes also often create crush injury situations. Many people end up trapped beneath rubble or inside collapsed buildings and other structures.
Major risks of crush injuries
Victims of crush injuries usually face two major risks. First: organ failure. This is especially common with victims who end up with the trunk or torso crushed. Organs will quickly begin to struggle without proper blood flow or oxygen, which can lead to organ failure.
Organ failure often perpetuates itself in this situation, too. Other organs may work harder to offset the damage, causing them to fail, too.
The other big risk comes in the form of infection. Many crush injury victims can suffer from necrosis of tissue as it loses oxygen and dies. This paves the way for bacteria to enter the bloodstream, causing major problems with gangrene, sepsis or more.
Needless to say, these serious repercussions demand immediate medical attention for the best possible outcomes.