When working in construction, you have numerous potential threats and risks that you face every day. One of these threats comes in the form of crush injuries, which can occur any time you work with large, heavy objects or machinery.
Crush injuries can have a serious impact on your overall health and wellness and can lead to extreme complications and even death.
What causes crush injuries?
Medline Plus takes a look at the way crush injuries impact your physical health. First, understand what causes a crush injury. In all incidents, the crush injury occurs when part of the body gets pinned, run over or crushed by a heavier object or piece of equipment. Examples can include someone running over a victim’s foot with a truck, or a piece of construction equipment falling from overhead and pinning the victim to the ground by their trunk.
Common complications
One of the biggest complication risks for crush injuries to extremities comes in the form of amputation. If you lose circulation and blood flow, you lose oxygen, which can cause tissues to die off due to necrosis. If too much tissue dies, the limb is unsalvageable and a doctor must amputate it to save the rest of your body.
With crush injuries to the trunk, organ failure poses one of the biggest dangers. When blood and oxygen cannot properly get to organs, they can shut down. In either case, you can also suffer from infections like gangrene or sepsis, a severe and often fatal infection of the blood. This is why it is crucial for all crush injury victims to get immediate medical attention.