TRAUMA: Flail Chest

This is a great video of a flail chest I found while studying for an EMT class that I'm taking right now. You can clearly visual the anatomy of the injury as the chest rises and falls, as well as see the clear line of contusion over the area of the breaks.

Flail Chest Video

Flail chest occurs when two or more ribs break in two or more places. This creates a "floating," or free area of ribs as they are no longer attached to the entire rib cage. Once this has happened, this portion of ribs will no longer rise upwards as the lungs inflate, partially because they may or may not still be attached via the intercostal muscles that contract to pull the ribs upward and increase the size of the chest cavity to allow for lung expansion (and therefore inspiration.) This obviously causes respiratory issues, including decreased tidal volume (or the amount of oxygen that the lungs can take in.) But the more serious issue here is a likely pulmonary contusion due to the force generated. Our ribs exist to protect our vital organs, namely our lungs and our heart. When something causes enough trauma to break at least two ribs in at least two places, then we need to seriously consider the vast extent of underlying damage that could have occurred.

It's really neat to see, but definitely not neat to have...





And here's a bonus:
SELF-INTUBATION...

ParamedicTV is powered by EMS1.com