A crush injury occurs in any situation where you can end up with a part of your body compressed or crushed by another larger and/or heavier object. These incidents often take place on construction sites but can happen anywhere large or heavy objects exist.
Crush injuries can have numerous negative effects on the body. It is important to understand the most serious side effects in order to properly treat or mitigate them.
Complications with infections
Up To Date discusses crush injuries and their effects on victims. First, crush injuries often fall into one of two categories. They can involve the limbs or extremities, such as the legs, arms, hands and feet. They can also involve the trunk or torso area, which includes the internal organs.
The most serious complications resulting from crush injuries to extremities include different types of infection. If a limb ends up without circulation or oxygen for an extended period of time, the tissue will begin to die and necrotize. This creates the perfect environment for bacteria to cause infections like gangrene.
In serious cases, a blood infection called sepsis may also occur. Septic shock, a form of sepsis, can result in the victim’s death less than 72 hours after symptoms begin to appear.
Organ shutdown and failure
As for injuries to the trunk, organ failure ranks among the most serious effects. This happens when the blood pressure rises or falls suddenly and oxygenated blood gets cut off from organs. If they have to work too hard to try circulating blood, or simply cannot function due to the force of the crush, they may shut down or begin to fail.
Either of these situations can result in a fatal outcome, which is why it is important for victims to get immediate medical attention.
