You can suffer many types of injuries in a car crash. Some are more common than others. For example, many victims will deal with back and head injuries. But you could also suffer from less common ones, like a crush injury.
What is a crush injury, and how do they affect you?
What happens during a crush injury?
Medline Plus discusses the repercussion of crush injuries on the body. A crush injury happens when a heavy object falls on part of your body. The crush injury may occur over a longer period of time, or it might have relatively instantaneous impacts depending on the full weight and size of the item.
When a body part ends up crushed, the soft tissue might get flattened. It could even burst in some cases, which creates a big problem for doctors later. For example, many victims with crushed feet end up needing amputations due to how hard it is to fix burst flesh.
What are the consequences?
On top of that, necrosis and other such issues can set in very quickly after the crush injury happens. Sometimes, within hours, a person’s tissues could already suffer from the early stages of necrosis. Again, this makes it hard for doctors and they may have to rely on amputation.
Crush injuries also cause problems for your other internal systems. After all, the pressure it creates can cause other organs to suffer. Not only that, but blood cannot flow properly when an area of your body gets blocked due to an object. This can create problems in the blood stream which can even lead to embolism and stroke. Thus, you want medical attention and removal of the object as quickly and safely as possible.