Crushing injuries are different from ordinary bruises or broken bones. When large areas of your body experience crushing forces, the resulting damage can cause long-term disabilities. These massive tissue injuries can also overwhelm your organs, leading to life-threatening complications.
As a result, crushing injuries often require hospitalization and expensive long-term medical care. They may also interfere with your ability to earn a living. Extensive damage may even force you to stop working altogether. Take a closer look at the causes and effects of these serious injuries.
Crushing Injury Definition
A crushing injury occurs when a part of the body experiences intense pressure. This pressure has two effects. First, it creates a large injury area. When applied to a small area, these forces may cause a severe but treatable injury.
For example, a heavy object falling onto your toe might injure the toe but leave your foot unharmed. By contrast, a truck running over you might crush your entire foot, resulting in extensive damage.
Second, crushing injuries usually involve heavy weight. This weight can cause severe injuries, including extensive tissue death. In other words, the damage caused by crushing injuries is often both widespread and severe.
Causes Of Crushing Injuries In Texas
Crushing injuries can result from several kinds of accidents in Texas, including the following:
Traffic Accidents
Motor vehicle collisions can cause crushing injuries. For example, a car accident can deform the passenger compartment of your vehicle. You may even get trapped as the metal crushes your body.
A key danger arising from crushing injuries caused by car accidents is that first responders may need time to extract you from your vehicle. While you wait for assistance, your injuries may worsen.
However, car accidents are not the only traffic-related cause of crushing injuries. Pedestrians are also vulnerable to injury since they have nothing to protect them when a vehicle collides with them. Therefore, a pedestrian accident may result in crushing injuries if the vehicle’s tire drives over part of the victim’s body.
Workplace Incidents
The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) identifies four construction accidents that cause the majority of worker fatalities, including electrocution, falls, being struck by something, or being caught in or between objects. Two of these “fatal four” accidents can produce crushing injuries.
Struck-by accidents include accidents involving vehicles or falling objects striking workers. These heavy objects can crush the victim.
Similarly, caught-in-or-between accidents happen when workers get trapped in machinery, between a vehicle and a fixed object, or inside a collapsing trench or building. These accidents can crush the worker’s body.
Falling Objects
Falling objects are not just a hazard in the workplace. People can also suffer crushing injuries when objects fall on them at restaurants, stores, or other public places. For example, you might suffer a crushing injury if a pallet falls on you at a warehouse store.
Effects Of Crushing Injuries
Crushing injuries can produce significant tissue damage with long-term complications. Here are some of the effects you can suffer from crushing injuries:
Shattered Bones
One of the most common consequences of crushing injuries is shattered bones, also called comminuted fractures. A comminuted fracture happens when a bone breaks into three or more pieces. Since at least one of these pieces must be floating in the injured area, doctors often need to use screws, plates, and rods to hold the fragments together.
Normally, fractures take six to eight weeks to heal. Comminuted fractures, by contrast, may take up to a year to heal.
Nerve Damage
Nerves carry motor signals from the brain to the body and sensory signals in the opposite direction. Nerves use a combination of electricity and chemistry to transmit these signals. When nerve cells suffer damage, they cannot transmit these signals. Specifically, crushed nerves may misfire or drop signals.
Symptoms of nerve damage may include the following:
- Pain
- Numbness
- Tingling
- Weakness
- Paralysis
Doctors can sometimes graft individual nerves to help correct such issues.
Amputation
Severe damage may require amputation. Specifically, crushing injuries can permanently collapse the blood vessels. Without blood circulation, the tissue can die; in some cases, doctors cannot repair the blood vessels. Instead, they must amputate the area affected by the crushing injury.
Kidney Damage
Crush syndrome, also called traumatic rhabdomyolysis, results from the massive tissue death caused by a crushing injury. When tissues die, the dead cells and their byproducts are carried by the bloodstream to the kidneys. There, the kidneys filter the blood to remove the debris.
However, crushing injuries result in widespread tissue death and massive amounts of waste products in the bloodstream. The kidneys may get overwhelmed and shut down as a result. Unfortunately, this complication is extremely dangerous, with a mortality rate near 20%.
Consult A Skilled Galveston Personal Injury Attorney At The Law Firm Of Alton C. Todd Personal Injury Laywers For A Free Consultation
A crushing injury can produce permanent disabilities and mountains of medical bills. The good news is that you can recover compensation for these losses with the right advocate’s help.
At The Law Firm of Alton C. Todd Personal Injury Lawyers, we have over 58 years of combined experience protecting the rights and futures of Galveston residents.
Contact us at (409) 207-9299 for a free consultation with a Galveston personal injury attorney.
