With daylight saving time now over for this year and winter quickly approaching, you face increased chances of becoming involved in a Georgia motor vehicle accident in which you could sustain serious injuries. Unfortunately, one of the most common injuries you can suffer in a car crash is that of a crush injury when one or more of your body parts, such as an arm, leg or chest, gets brutally pinned between two hard objects.
Crush injuries can produce a variety of symptoms, including the following:
- Severe pain
- Extensive bleeding
- Numbness in the affected area
- Bone fractures in the affected area
- Widespread bruising and tissue damage in the affected area
Subsequent complications
While your crush injury can be serious when it first occurs, its aftermath can turn it into a truly catastrophic, life-changing or even life-threatening situation. Crush injuries commonly result in one or more of the following post-occurrence complications that put you in even more danger:
- Widespread infections
- Necrosis, a situation in which the tissues around your injury die
- Compartment Syndrome, a situation in which the muscles around your injury die
- Rhabdomyolysis, a situation in which your dying and dead muscles produce toxins that permeate into your bloodstream
If your crush injury occurs to one of your hands, feet, arms or legs, you may have to undergo amputation of that limb due to the severity of the damage to it. If your crush injury occurs to one or more of the vertebrae in your neck or back, your body could become partially or completely paralyzed below the point of your injury, requiring you to spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair.
Considering the truly devastating injuries and complications a crush injury can cause, the most important thing you can do after sustaining one is to avail yourself of emergency and hospital medical diagnosis and treatment. In all likelihood, you will need to undergo emergency surgery.