How about another one? While serving in Saudi Arabia as the NCOIC of the ER, we received a soldier with a head injury. He had been repairing or replacing a tire on a 2 1/2 ton truck. Those tires are quite large and require extra safety precautions because the split ring retainer can easily slip, or the tire can burst, causing catastrophic damage. Safety precautions require placing the tire and wheel inside of a steel cage specifically designed for safety and life saving precautions. This soldier did follow the instructions and he inflated the tire inside the steel cage. However, when the tire exploded, the cuncussion threw the soldier backwards with sufficient velocity, that when he hit his head on the tongue of an adjacent trailer, he was scalped. He was delivered to the ER with his scalp attached only by about an inch of skin on his forehead. Fortunately, the avulsion was a clean cut almost all the way around his head and he managed to keep it clean. After clearing his skull of any fractures via x-ray, I irrigated the scalp and the skull, then I sutured his scalp onto his head. It was an interesting suture job with excellent results. And it just goes to show you that being scalped is in itself not deadly as seen on TV. However, the taking of the scalp will have dire consequences.
Posted on: Sun, 10 Nov 2013 06:08:49 +0000
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