Death and Injury

Don't they cause enough pain and suffering as it is?

chrisdrudge — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:00:00 +0000

Don't they cause enough pain and suffering as it is?

Wolf J, Curtis N. Brain abscess secondary to dental braces. Pediatr Infect Dis J. 2008 Jan;27(1):84-5.

Blum-Hareuveni T, Rehany U, Rumelt S. Devastating endophthalmitis following penetrating ocular injury during night sleep from orthodontic headgear: case report and literature review. Graefes Arch Clin Exp Ophthalmol. 2006 Feb;244(2):253-8.

Fact: Orthodontic devices of all types are the spawn of the devil. Some go straight for your brain, while others prefer to wait until you are fast asleep and then poke your fucking eyes out.

chrisdrudge Fri, 12/12/2008 - 03:00

Tags

Death and Injury

If this is really.. I am surprised

I had braces with the outside headgear for 4 years before I got them off in 5th grade. I still have many scars inside my mouth which elicit pity from new dentists. But thank God my headgear never attacked my eyes! All I got on the outside was a constant rash from the neckband.

Golf clubs are dangerous weapons

chrisdrudge — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 10:30:00 +0000

Golf clubs are dangerous weapons

McIntosh BC, Strugar J, Narayan D. Traumatic frontal bone fracture resulting in intracerebral pneumocephalus. J Craniofac Surg. 2005 May;16(3):461-3.

Some college-aged kid got smacked in the face with a golf club, breaking a bunch of stuff that required a fair bit of surgery to repair. Kid shows up a couple of weeks later leaking spinal cord juice from his nose and complaining of headache. He is diagnosed with intracerebral pneumocephalus (IP), which is doctor-speak for having air inside your brain. Back to the OR he goes, where they somehow get the air out of his brain.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, IP is usually the result of being hit really hard in the head with something. Not only do you have to fracture your skull, you also have to tear the dura mater and arachnoid mater. Apparently one of the possible symptoms of IP is hearing a splashing sound akin to liquid sloshing around in your head whenever you move it.

Oh, and here's a photo of IP:

chrisdrudge Sun, 12/07/2008 - 05:30

Tags

Death and Injury

'pneumocephalus' ? That's a medical term? I'm laughing at that. The group I ran with in high school used that very word to designate stupid people (or people we perceived as stupid).

llewelly: Clearly someone stupid at your school heard the word and thought it sounded stupid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumocephalus

Woah, you are alive! Cool post =)

Or .. they put 2 and 2 together and thought hmmm maybe that's a fancy way to say AIRHEAD !!!! you Airhead =p

I'm with Chase on this one.

Also, nice to see this blog is still alive. Note, Chris, that this post received 4 comments in a day, on a blog that hasn't been updated in over 2 months. You've got followers, don't leave them hanging. ;-)

Chris, you OK?

I note that you've updated neither of your blogs much at all in the past several months. Pharmacology school finally squeezing each last bit of free will and leisure time from your gasping lungs?

Foreman, a fine reminder. I'll try to keep things a little more, er, regular around here.

Toast, I'm fine. I got a little burnt out blogging-wise around the same time that research in the lab got particularly exiting (read: late nights), so I decided to take a little break.

No offense meant but I think your heading "Golf clubs are dangerous weapons" is quite conclusive. It doesn't necessarily mean that way just because it caused the kid's misfortune.

To quote: "Perhaps unsurprisingly, IP is usually the result of being hit really hard in the head with something."---maybe a baseball bat or ball or accidentally you tripped over and fell hard on the concrete pavement.

Successful suicide edition

chrisdrudge — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Successful suicide edition

Oh look, a blog that hasn't been updated in almost a month. Heh.

When it comes to suicide, you've got a fairly standard list of methods to work with: firing a bullet into your head, consuming copious amounts of highly toxic drugs/chemicals, jumping in front or off of something, hanging your neck from something, slicing your wrist (vertically, of course), and drowning. Then you have the weird approaches to offing yourself, which is where I come in.

Sauvageau A, Yesovitch R. Choking on toilet paper: an unusual case of suicide and a review of the literature on suicide by smothering, strangulation, and choking. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2006 Jun;27(2):173-4.

Y'know when you get a bit of kleenex in your mouth and it dries out your cheek/tongue/gums and then gets stuck and feels really gross? Imagine that times a thousand while choking to death. Fun times.

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Lunetta P, Ohberg A, Sajantila A. Suicide by intracerebellar ballpoint pen. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2002 Dec;23(4):334-7.

I like how they didn't figure out the dude had a friggin' Bic stuck in his head until they cut him open at the autopsy.

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Ellis PS. Fatal gunshot injury caused by an unusual projectile--a barrel-cleaning brush as a tandem bullet. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 1997 Jun;18(2):168-71.

Somebody was sure in a rush / To kill themselves with a brush

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Blanco Pampin JM, Lopez-Abajo Rodriguez BA. Suicidal hanging within an automobile. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2001 Dec;22(4):367-9.

So much for seat belts saving lives.

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Murty OP. Unusual self-electrocution simulating judicial electrocution by an adolescent. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2008 Jun;29(2):167-9.

Not just electrocution, but judicial electrocution. Might as well do it up right before you go out, just sticking a wire in a socket is kind of lame.

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Lin Z, Kondo T, Sato Y, Ohtsuji M, Takayasu T, Ohshima T. An autopsy case of suicidal strangulation with four looped rubber bands. Nihon Hoigaku Zasshi. 1997 Jun;51(3):231-4.

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Prahlow JA, Doyle BW. A suicide using a homemade carbon monoxide "death machine". Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2005 Jun;26(2):177-80.

Chemistry for the suicidal: formic acid + sulfuric acid -(closed room)-> drifting slowly off to an unending sleep

chrisdrudge Tue, 06/24/2008 - 02:00

Tags

Death and Injury

Suicide being acceptable or not, is completely subjective point of view, defined by one's views of life. No one can ever know certainly what moves in other's thoughts. Like speedwell wisely notified, unsuccesful suicide attempts can be easily more tragic than plain death.

Unless need for suicide is removed altogether, hiding information how to do it properly is nothing more than hypocritical cowardness at the best.

I suppose you've left it up to your readers to point out the missing essential ingredients in the above recipes for self-annihilation... namely, luck and skill. I was once told by a psychology professor that suicides fail a lot. Like a LOT. And the results are often more tragic than a nice clean death would have been.

"Oh look, a blog that hasn't been updated in almost a month. Heh."

*cough*

Committing sucessful suicide is crazy! And those who right about it might not be all there either, like this religious nut:
http://www.teamtruth.com/sermon/ser_successfulsuicide.htm

Not just electrocution, but judicial electrocution. Might as well do it up right before you go out

I keep coming back to this blog over and over but never find anything new. Chris, have you given up on us?

Another unusual car-related one was in the UK papers recently: Hubby in Aston Martin suicide.

Unsuccessful suicide edition

chrisdrudge — Fri, 30 May 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Unsuccessful suicide edition

Let's be morbid, shall we?

Van de Putte D, Ceelen W, Gillardin JM, Pattyn P, de Hemptinne B. Attempted Suicide by Auto-Injection of Polyurethane (PU) Foam: Report of a Case. J Trauma. 2007 Jun 1; [Epub ahead of print] No abstract available.

I'm not sure how this would work. Where exactly did it get injected? Ear? Mouth? Belly button?

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Panourias IG, Slatinopoulos VK, Arvanitis DL. Penetrating craniocerebral injury caused by a pneumatic nail gun: an unsuccessful attempt of suicide. Clin Neurol Neurosurg. 2006 Jul;108(5):490-2.

Man, I really want to play Quake for some reason.

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Burd A, Ahmed K, Noronha FV, Chan JY, Pang PC. Surgical reconstruction of attempted suicide charcoal burns. J Burn Care Res. 2006 May-Jun;27(3):330-2.

Apparently the popular way to snuff yourself out these days in Hong Kong is by burning charcoal in an enclosed space, leading to carbon monoxide poisoning.

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Vayvada H, Menderes A, Yilmaz M, Mola F, Kzlkaya A, Atabey A. Management of close-range, high-energy shotgun and rifle wounds to the face. J Craniofac Surg. 2005 Sep;16(5):794-804.

Arsefaces!

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Spiers AS. Attempted suicide or hitting the nail on the head. Case report. J Fla Med Assoc. 1994 Dec;81(12):822-3.

Another nail one, but this one is way more hardcore, since the personal involved actually hammered a couple of nails into their head with a hammer!

chrisdrudge Fri, 05/30/2008 - 01:00

Tags

Death and Injury

I like these better (although very out of season):
Brazier. Eye damage from Christmas trees. Lancet 1984;2:1335.

Tiede RH, Hover JR, Davies SF. Unilateral phrenic nerve paralysis from cutting down a Christmas tree. South Med J 1994;87:1161-3.

Boglioli LR, Taff ML. "The Santa Claus syndrome" - entrapment in chimneys. J Forensic Sci 1995;40:499-500.

The guy with the polyurethane foam injected it into his nose. There's pictures of the removed, hardened foam in the case report. He might be stupid, but he's the only person in the world with a cast of the inside of his stomach.

This is why they post all of those warnings on roller coaster line entrance signs

chrisdrudge — Mon, 12 May 2008 06:00:00 +0000

This is why they post all of those warnings on roller coaster line entrance signs

Thakur D, Pocha M. Pneumothorax after a roller coaster ride. Arch Dis Child. 2006 May;91(5):421. No abstract available.

So riding a roller coaster can potentially cause your lung to deflate like a balloon. Now that's a ride!

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Roldan-Valadez E, Facha MT, Martinez-Lopez M, Herrera-Mora P. Subdural hematoma in a teenager related to roller-coaster ride. Eur J Paediatr Neurol. 2006 Jul;10(4):194-6. Epub 2006 Sep 1.

A subdural hematoma occurs when veins in your brain rupture for some reason (usually a head injury), resulting in blood pooling underneath your skull. The pressure created by the pooling blood can deform your brain.

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Schievink WI, Ebersold MJ, Atkinson JL. Roller-coaster headache due to spinal cerebrospinal fluid leak. Lancet. 1996 May 18;347(9012):1409. No abstract available.

A fluid leak sounds like a car problem and not a person problem. Ick.

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Pelletier AR, Gilchrist J. Roller coaster related fatalities, United States, 1994--2004. Inj Prev. 2005 Oct;11(5):309-12.

Approximately four people die every year in the United States due to a roller coaster-related injury. Given the abject stupidity of a good portion of humanity, I honestly figured it would be worse than that.

chrisdrudge Mon, 05/12/2008 - 02:00

Tags

Death and Injury

: Presse Med. 2000 Feb 5;29(4):175-80. Neurological complications after roller coaster rides: an emerging new risk? Kettaneh A, Biousse V, Bousser MG. Service de Médecine interne, Hôpital Jean Verdier, Bondy.

METHODS: We report 6 cases of complications occurring after roller-coaster rides and analyze published data. RESULTS: Complications seen our patients included 5 cervicoencephalic arterial dissections, one with brainstem dysfunction due to extending syringobulbia. Reported data include one cervicoencephalic arterial dissection, one case of carotid artery occlusion, 3 cases of subdural hematoma, one with subarachnoid hemorrhage, one with cerebrospinal fluid leak, and one with Brown-Séquard syndrome secondary to an enterogenous cyst of the spinal cord.

I don't know what syringobulbia is, but I'm glad I don't have it.

As funny as these are, it's important to remember that rollercoasters are pretty safe and you're a lot more likely to die driving to a theme park.

Postmortem fun!

chrisdrudge — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 11:11:17 +0000

Postmortem fun!

Kunz J, Gross A. Victim's scalp on the killer's head. An unusual case of criminal postmortem mutilation. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 2001 Sep;22(3):327-31.

Dude must have watched him some Con Air. Sweet movie, BTW. John Malkovich and Steve Buscemi as murderous badasses, and Nic Cage with greasy dreads. What else do you need? Don't you dare say a script.

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Ropohl D, Scheithauer R, Pollak S. Postmortem injuries inflicted by domestic golden hamster: morphological aspects and evidence by DNA typing. Forensic Sci Int. 1995 Mar 31;72(2):81-90.

Sperhake JP, Tsokos M. [Postmortem bite injuries cause by a domestic cat]
Arch Kriminol. 2001 Sep-Oct;208(3-4):114-9. German.

Romain N, Brandt-Casadevall C, Dimo-Simonin N, Michaud K, Mangin P, Papilloud J. Post-mortem castration by a dog: a case report. Med Sci Law. 2002 Jul;42(3):269-71.

Tsokos M, Schulz F, PÃ¼schel K. Unusual injury pattern in a case of postmortem animal depredation by a domestic German shepherd. Am J Forensic Med Pathol. 1999 Sep;20(3):247-50.

Today's A Good Poop life lesson: Don't die alone with animals in the house if you want an open coffin. Man's best friend my ass.

chrisdrudge Wed, 04/09/2008 - 07:11

Tags

Death and Injury

Thanks for very interesting article. btw. I really enjoyed reading this article, can I put it in site: http://www.hipotekaplus.pl/kredyt_mieszkaniowy

I was under the impression that it's fairly unusual for dogs to eat their owners corpses after death.

I hate to say it, but aren't forensic science journals sort of like cheating? Half the articles, you can just hear someone going "and you won't BELIEVE what happened to THIS one."

Yes, the dog one sounded unusual to me too. I wasn't aware that even wild dogs would eat fallen pack members?

@LeftWingFox:

In my forensic training, we were repeatedly told that dogs of dead owners will generally wait a long time before beginning to consume said owner. I'm not sure whether it's been tested, but it was taken as a decent rule-of-thumb starting point that a dog-chewed decedent had been down for at least a couple days.

Cats, on the other hand, begin to dine pretty much immediately after the first missed feeding.

Hey, the poor animals do eventually get hungry, you know.

Fun with celebratory gunfire

chrisdrudge — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 09:00:00 +0000

Fun with celebratory gunfire

So the word is on the street that if you fire a bunch of bullets up in the air, they eventually end up falling back to earth at speeds capable of killing people. Great way to celebrate, eh? Celebratory gunfire injuries occur worldwide, and represent the ultimate in preventable injury.

Incorvaia AN, Poulos DM, Jones RN, Tschirhart JM. Can a falling bullet be lethal at terminal velocity? Cardiac injury caused by a celebratory bullet. Ann Thorac Surg. 2007 Jan;83(1):283-4.

Some dude was out celebrating New Year's in East Lansing, Michigan, and ended up in the hospital with a bullet in his stomach. A bullet that passed through the right ventricle of his heart on the way there! Dude lost over 5 litres of blood and went through a 9-hour surgery to remove the bullet and repair the damage it caused. All thanks to some asshole who didn't think about where bullets go when they are fired up into the sky.

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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). New Year's Eve injuries caused by celebratory gunfire--Puerto Rico, 2003. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2004 Dec 24;53(50):1174-5.

The particularly wonderful thing about celebratory gunfire injuries is that they are utterly indiscriminate. A report by the Puerto Rico Department of Health found that celebratory gunfire injuries affected a higher percentage of women and children than injuries from regular old shooting at things.

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Ordog GJ, Dornhoffer P, Ackroyd G, Wasserberger J, Bishop M, Shoemaker W, Balasubramanium S. Spent bullets and their injuries: the result of firing weapons into the sky. J Trauma. 1994 Dec;37(6):1003-6.

Between 1985 and 1992, 118 people were treated for random falling-bullet injuries at a single hospital in Los Angeles. The breakdown of injuries caused by celebratory gunshots is as follows: 77% head, 12% shoulder, 5% upper back, 2% chest, 1% upper arm, 1% leg, and 1% foot.

chrisdrudge Sun, 03/16/2008 - 05:00

Tags

Death and Injury

The potential lethality of falling projectiles is dependent on trajectory. If fired straight up, such that it stalls and passes through zero velocity, it will tumble at a (usually) non-lethal velocity back to earth. Fired at enough of an angle, however, such that it ends-over at greater-than zero velocity, it will maintain spin and ballistic trajectory as it accelerates back to ground (or through whatever gets in the way).

Where can you get a sombrero-style combat helmet?

Remember, though: "Guns don't kill people, random celebratory shootings in the air causing internal bleeding, which, if not properly cared-for can kill people."

A contract group was in Iraq developing and flying RPV's for the Navy. One day they were all atwitter because one of their ships had taken fire. Indeed there was a bullet hole through the wing spar. Turns out they had flown the RPV over a wedding celebration. So there is hostile fire, friendly fire and celebratory fire in Iraq.

Don't forget the work of Hyneman, Jamie and Savage, Adam.

Online suicide encouragement

chrisdrudge — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Online suicide encouragement

Chodorowski Z, Sein Anand J. [Internet as a means of persuading a patient to commit a suicide] Przegl Lek. 2002;59(4-5):375-6. Polish.

So apparently this lady in Poland trolled the internet for a depressed student, found one, and then proceeded to badger her into committing suicide by sending her near-daily memos on how to efficiently off herself. A great reminder (in case you needed one) of how fucked up some people are, and how dangerous the Internet can be sometimes.

chrisdrudge Tue, 03/11/2008 - 02:00

Tags

Death and Injury

There's a group of medical bloggers doing just that to somebody they call the speaker for all nurses and a lot of other insults. Read the blogs, musings of a highly trained monkey, crass pollination and the comments of the dozen or so who write as if they would like to see her dead. They refer to her in despicable ways, and one of them wrote that it was OK to make fun of her if she wasn't dead. Supposedly they are nurses and doctors. It's chilling.

Suicide encouragement? Might not be far off. Do you remember
"Soilent Green" with Charleton Heston? The quality of life continues to decline, in spite of technological advances. Why? Because people don't feel needed or appreciated anymore. Empathy is as rare as snipes.
Let's face it, this place is getting worse and worse, and
the rate of worse is entering an exponential area of the graph.
Personally, I'd rather die in the most dramatic way possible, hopefully punctuating a worthy cause.
Oh well, you're probably not interested anyway, so I'll go back to searching midget lesbian pee freaks.
Thanks,
Rob

Dave, if you killed yourself you would not be going to heaven.

Dave,
You don't go to heaven when you die, you become worm food.

I read your link. Yep, a sad story for sure! I have been suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for over 16 years and yesterday was a rough health day, so I can relate to wanting to just die and go to heaven! How incredibly rough and sad life can be seems to have been the motive for the encourager in this story! No question about it, life can be really sad sometimes!
Dave Briggs :~)

Injurious (and occasionally deadly) microwaves

chrisdrudge — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 11:21:39 +0000

Injurious (and occasionally deadly) microwaves

Frey FJ. [Microwave-induced heating injury] Ther Umsch. 2004 Dec;61(12):703-6. German.

This one's in German. Though I no spreken ze deutch, the translated abstract tells the sad medical tale of a diabetic who was burnt by a warm-up pillow that was overheated in a microwave. The burns lead to amputation followed by infection with MRSA (a super-antibiotic-resistant bacterium) with subsequent heart attack and death. Total bummer.

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Dixon JJ, Burd DA, Roberts DG. Severe burns resulting from an exploding teat on a bottle of infant formula milk heated in a microwave oven. Burns. 1997 May;23(3):268-9.

This is definitely the most horrifying paper I've ever come across. New parents, please take note and be careful!

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Fung AE, Oxford KW. Microwave-superheated Vics Vapo Rub: an ocular public health danger. Am J Ophthalmol. 2004 Feb;137(2):379-80.

People heat that stuff in the microwave?! It contains menthol, which is going to create a cooling sensation anyway!

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Berestizshevsky S, Goldenberg-Cohen N, Friling R, Weinberger D, Snir M. Ocular injury in children from exploding microwaved eggs. Am J Ophthalmol. 2005 Apr;139(4):718-9.

Note to self: never heat an egg in the microwave. Unless I want to see it blow up. Which I kind of do, I'm not going to front. Also, I wear glasses, so nice try ocular injury!

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DeToledo JC, Lowe MR. Microwave oven injuries in patients with complex partial seizures. Epilepsy Behav. 2004 Oct;5(5):772-4.

So apparently people don't feel pain when they have a complex partial seizure. It makes handling hot food a serious problem.

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Donohue KG, Nahm WK, Badiavas E, Li L, Pedvis-Leftick A. Hot pop brown spot: erythema Ab igne induced by heated popcorn. J Dermatol. 2002 Mar;29(3):172-3.

This isn't exactly an injury, but it's got a groovy title. Also, erythema ab igne seems more like the results of somebody randomly pressing on a keyboard and less like the name of an actual skin condition. Just saying.

chrisdrudge Mon, 02/25/2008 - 06:21

Tags

Death and Injury

I once exploded an egg in a microwave at an old job (didn't know it would explode). Let me tell you this is not something you will want to do in your own home. First, it smells pretty bad and second its a real pain to clean the resulting egg mess from the interior surfaces of the microwave.

FYI, we tried an orange next hoping that at least it would make the place smell nicer, but the attempt proved unsuccessful as the orange remained intact. Perhaps we didn't leave it in long enough.

Several years ago a friend of mine decided to reheat a couple of hard boiled eggs in the microwave. The first egg exploded almost as soon as the timer went off (no injuries, just a large mess). The second egg he placed on the counter to cool while he cleaned up the remains of the first egg. Ten minutes later, just as he was done cleaning, the second egg finally detonated and he was forced to start cleaning all over again.

Some years ago I saw a street show in Barcelona where the performer blowed up several things in a microwave. He started with eggs in a condom (no need to clean out the whole microwave afterwards), progressed to blowing up containers with yoghurt and random fruits and vegetables to the highlight of the show: blowing up a coconut. It took like 10 minutes at full power (all the while the performer was cracking jokes to keep our attention) but eventually the coconut exploded with a big ban, and a force so big that the microwave door flew open. Really neat!

i blew up a human head in the microwave. in order to do this, you must first seal the neck opening, making it air tight. leave it in the microwave about 6 - 7 minutes. the eyes will burst first, then the head will bust open, in an exciting display of skull, brains, and assorted cranial contents. well worth the effort!

Yeah, blowing up eggs...painful memories! I decided one day to microwave an egg in a bowl of water thinking that it would do the same thing as the stove, except faster. Well, it all seemed to go okay and I pulled the egg out of the microwave and brought it over to the sink. I rinsed it off and gently cracked the shell. Then, I placed my thumb nail in the crack and punctured the inner membrane of the shell that still had it sealed...and BOOM!!!!!! Egg EVERY WHERE! Oh, and I got some very painful burns to my face and eye (I was leaning over it) and my thumb. I learned a painful lesson.

Really nice while reading your articles.And the links are very usefull for us.thanks

I had a microwaved hard-boiled egg blow up as I bit into it, and I can tell you, it doesn't just "pop". Two friends who were in the next room clearly heard it explode...and then my shouts of pain from the steam burns to my lips.