Mechanism of Injury
The transfer of energy or traumatic force that causes physical damage to the body.
What is mechanism of injury?
The simplest and most effective first step for controlling most external bleeding.
What is direct pressure?
The method that carves the adult body into 9% sections to estimate how much surface area is burned.
What is the Rule of Nines?
The anatomical name for the lower jaw.
What is the mandible?
Loss of memory for the events that came just before a head injury.
What is retrograde amnesia?
A segment of chest wall that moves in the opposite direction of the rest during breathing.
What is a flail chest?
The energy an object carries because it's moving — it climbs with mass, and even faster with speed.
What is kinetic energy?
When blood soaks through a dressing, do this instead of pulling the original one off.
What is apply another dressing on top?
Soot around the mouth, singed nasal hairs, and a hoarse voice all warn you about this life-threatening burn complication.
What is an airway (inhalation) burn?
Continuously flush a chemical eye splash for this long.
What is 20 minutes?
The brain injury that happens in the instant of impact — as opposed to the secondary injury that unfolds afterward.
What is primary (direct) brain injury?
The one-way device used on an open "sucking" chest wound so air escapes but can't get back in.
What is a vented chest seal? (Hyfin Chest Seakl)
Of all collision types, this pair — one that spins the vehicle and one that flips it — carries the greatest risk of multiple impacts.
What is rotational and rollover collisions?
Applied proximal to a wound, this device is the answer for life-threatening extremity bleeding that pressure can't stop.
What is a tourniquet?
Exposed abdominal organs (an evisceration) should be covered with this kind of dressing to keep them from drying out.
What is a moist, sterile dressing?
When irrigating one affected eye, aim the water THIS DIRECTION so you don't wash contaminants into the good eye.
What is from the inner (medial) corner toward the outer (lateral) corner
The name for bleeding that occurs within the brain tissue itself.
What is a intracerebral hematoma?
Blood or fluid collecting in the sac around the heart, squeezing it until it can't fill.
What is cardiac tamponade?
The reason we push to keep scene time short for critical trauma: survival hinges on the rapid identification and treatment of these.
What are life threatening injuries?
Black, tarry stool — a red flag for slow bleeding somewhere in the digestive tract.
What is melena?
This type of burn occurs without flame, something that can be encountered at HAZMAT scene
What is a chemical burn?
Rich in blood vessels, facial and scalp soft-tissue wounds are notorious for doing this.
What is bleed heavily?
Often showing no palpable deformity, this simple, non-displaced skull fracture is easy to miss on exam.
What is a linear skull fracture?
A blunt blow to the chest at exactly the wrong moment in the heart's cycle can trigger sudden arrest
What is commotio cordis?
A patient with a serious mechanism but no obvious injuries still earns transport to this specialized destination — not the nearest community hospital.
What is a trauma center?
This type of hemorrhage presents the highest risk of mortality and EMS lacks definitive abilities to mange it in the field.
What is noncompressible hemorrhage?
Because of thin skin and thin reserves, essentially any significant burn in these two populations is treated as more serious.
What are pediatrics and geriatrics?
In a bleeding, gurgling facial-trauma patient with altered mental status, this airway action comes before dressing the wounds and after opening the airway.
What is provide suctioning?
Raccoon eyes and Battle's sign point toward this fracture — but their absence doesn't rule it out.
What is a basilar skull fracture?
A worsening tension pneumothorax drops the blood pressure by compressing these TWO great vessels and choking off venous return.
What is the aorta and vena cava?