Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Skateboard Fail

Oh where do I begin with this one. The first time I saw this I passed it around to the other guys at the station and we all laughed till we cried. You've just got to feel for this guy and hope that something similar never, ever happens to you.

Freakin ouch.

There's a few things that I notice here. First of all, I would doubt that the guy was wearing a cup. In fact, from a my perspective and I'm not a sk8r, I notice the complete lack of safety equipment on this guy. None at all. No helmet, no knee pads, no elbow pads, and probably no support hose. I wonder if this guy had put any forethought into this stunt, as obviously he thought enough about it to have someone film it, if he would have maybe thought that he was going to end up in terrible, terrible pain.

It looks like thi$s guy chose to jump from a height of about 5 feet onto sloping concrete. So obviously he bruised his heels. That's the first injury I see. Then, we see the momentary bit of horrific realization that this guy went through when he saw that he was rapidly approaching that guy wire. That was awesome. It could have went a lot of ways here. At that speed, if he would have hit the wire itself on say, his neck, he could have potentially lacerated the skin and the great vessels underneath. Not to mention the related head trauma and c-spine injury that he would have suffered when his head hit the pavement. Thank goodness that didn't happen. Then he could have still reproduced. At least now he probably won't be able to for a while.
When he does impact, look at the hang time he gets with the crotchal contact on the wire. Thankfully the electric company thought to put that metal guard on there; otherwise I'll bet that the wire itself would have been small enough to slice him up a bit. But I want you to pay attention to the hang time that he gets. It's almost a second where the energy from his impact is being transferred initially to the wire, then back to his junk, and then back to the wire, and so forth. That's a lot of energy that is being absorbed, enough to even knock off his shoes. It's difficult to say whether that provided a cushion for the kinetic energy or whether the retransmission of the energy back into his junk causes more injury. Definitely here one should look for distal circulatory compromise on the right leg, and possible closed laceration of the femoral artery and inferior vena cava. This guy could bleed out into his pelvic area. Also look for a hip dislocation or a femoral neck fracture.

That's not even to say what he did to his junk. If he was "hanging" down the right side, there could be a lot of trauma to the junk down there, enough to fracture the shaft. Hopefully (and Oh God, I don't wanna know) this guy wasn't um, angry when this happened. There's a good chance that he was though, judging from his age and the fact that this stunt was probably put forth in order to impress a chick.

Wonder how that worked out for him, don't you?

I would still immobilize this guy with the full LSB, C-Collar, and blocks. While I wouldn't think that there was spinal involvement from the contact with the wire, there was still a lot of energy transfer to the spinal column from the initial vertical impact on the ground and there is a possibility of occult injury to the spine with the wire as well.

Treatment Recommendations:

- Spinal Immobilization - C-Collar, LSB, CID, and Tape
- Immobilization of both lower extremities
- Oxygen - For the circulatory compromise and the nausea that this guy's gonna get
- Bilateral large bore IVs - One of them can be capped but if this guy has a vascular injury to the large vessels in that part of the body, he could bleed out rather quickly.
- Transport to a trauma center with capabilities to deeply assess and rapidly repair any vascular injuries and/or a pelvic/femoral neck fracture.
- A good talking to and a high five, cuz that was awesome

Ta. - Proems1@yahoo.com

1 comment:

  1. hahaha..
    Perhaps a psychiatric consult for the resulting depression he will inevitably experience when he discovers his inability to...

    Or an appointment with a recruiter for a boy’s choir

    ReplyDelete