Cardiac trauma can be caused by either penetrating or nonpenetrating injuries. Common cardiac results of such injuries include myocardial rupture, contusion, laceration, pericardial insult, coronary injury, valvular damage, arrhythmias, and conduction abnormalities.
Penetrative cardiac injury can often result in life-threatening sequelae such as myocardial contusion or rupture, coronary vessel and valvular damage, pericardial effusion with tamponade, and arrhythmias of which gunshot injury is a chief culprit.
Penetrating heart trauma represents a lethal condition. This injury carries high mortality rates, even when its victims receive hospital care. Actual rates of survival are difficult to calculate, but many studies have estimated survival rates ranging from 3%-84% [1-7].
A cardiac stab wound is an uncommon and potentially lethal injury. With appropriate treatment, better than 90% of those admitted alive will survive.
Studies have found that survival rates for people hospitalized for heart attacks are approximately 90%1 to 97%.
Mortality after gunshot wounds to the thoracic aorta ranges from 92% to 100%. Survival is almost always in patients with injury from low-caliber, low-velocity bullets with hemorrhage contained by the wall of the aorta.
Most skin wounds heal within 10 days. But even with proper treatment, a wound infection may occur. Check the wound daily for signs of infection listed below. Stitches should be removed from the face within 5 days.
An abrasion collar, also known as an abrasion ring or abrasion rim, is a narrow ring of stretched, abraded skin immediately surrounding projectile wounds, such as gunshot wounds. It is most commonly associated with entrance wounds and is a mechanical defect due to a projectile's penetration through the skin.
The physiologic effects of penetrating wounds of the chest are impairment of ventilation and reduction of cardiac output. Ventilation may be affected by pneumothorax, hemothorax, injury of pulmonary parenchyma, diaphragm, chest wall or phrenic nerves and retention of tracheobronchial secretions.
Your healthcare provider may or may not remove the bullet. He or she may clean your wound and close it with stitches or staples.
Long-term complications can include bowel obstruction, failure to thrive, neurogenic bladder and paralysis, recurrent cardiorespiratory distress and pneumothorax, hypoxic brain injury leading to early dementia, amputations, chronic pain and pain with light touch (hyperalgesia), deep venous thrombosis with pulmonary ...
The injuries depend on the type of firearm used, the size (caliber) of bullet, where on your body you were shot, and how soon you were treated. You may need a range of treatments as well, including surgery to remove the bullets or repair tissue. You may need to stay in the hospital while you recover.
Carotid arterial injuries are the most difficult and certainly the most immediately life-threatening injuries found in penetrating neck trauma. Their propensity to bleed actively and potentially occludes the airway and makes surgical intervention very challenging.
If you've crushed a vein or artery, you may feel pain or pressure, and see or feel a lump or bruise.
Arterial puncture is the most frequent complication associated with central venous cannulation, and is potentially fatal.
A bullet is lead, so if it is in the body, it will leak lead into the body, which gets into the bloodstream. Side effects are bound to happen in time from the exposure. Despite the new research, many still feel leaving the bullet is the best solution.
Healing the physical and emotional wounds can take years, with survivors often struggling with chronic pain, crippling anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. In rare cases, retained bullets can lead to lead poisoning.
Most bullets are designed to hit the target without exiting, for this imparts all the bullet's KE to the target and does the most damage. However, in many situations an exit wound will be present.
Round nose bullets provide more damage and deeper penetration than other types of bullets, such as flat-nose bullets.
When bullets fly through the air, they do so at amazing speeds. The fastest bullets travel more than 2,600 feet per second. That's equivalent to over 1,800 miles per hour. To put that in perspective, it's amazing to realize that bullets travel over twice the speed of sound!
The cartridge case is left in the chamber and must be ejected by mechanical means. Most pistol bullets are made of a lead-antimony alloy encased in a soft brass or copper-plated soft steel jacket. In rifle and machine-gun bullets, a soft core of lead is encased in a harder jacket of steel or cupronickel.
A bullet traveling at only 150 feet per second (46 m/s) to 170 feet per second (52 m/s) can penetrate human skin, and at 200 feet per second (60 m/s) it can penetrate the skull. A bullet that does not penetrate the skull may still result in an intracranial injury.
Sorry, the human body cannot “move out” anything larger than a splinter. An embedded bullet along with a bit of clothing can only be removed by surgical excision.
If they're shot in a vital organ, it only takes a bullet in a bad position for someone to die. So if you're shot in a major vessel, like the aorta, or the vena cava, or the carotid artery, or the femoral artery, you can just bleed to death from that.