Trauma Essay

Pulmonary contusions are another consequence from trauma to the chest, possibly not as severe as examples prior, but still dangerous. A pulmonary contusion is usually due to a blunt trauma to the thoracic cavity; the trauma causes blood to accumulate in the lung tissues and alveoli without lacerating the lung tissues. The lungs swell with the blood in the tissues, like a contusion anywhere else on the surface of the body, hence the term, “bruised lung.” With a pulmonary contusion, the patient will present, “...Tachypnea and tachycardia; while auscultating, rales and decreased breath sounds can be heard. Wheezing, coughing, and productive blood streaked sputum can be present; hypotension and reduced cardiac output accompany. Respiratory distress

Different ideas and creative thinking towards the prevention or lessening of damage to the body can play just as large of a role as research on repairing that trauma. Research has been conducted in the United Kingdom on the prevalence of chest trauma. From January 1998 to January 2003; the findings presented the information, “Over the six-year period, out of 25,467 trauma patients admitted in our institution there were 1,164 (five percent) patients with at least one chest injury” (Veysi, 2009). Out of those 1,164 patients with at least one chest injury, fifty-seven percent of the those patients sustained the injury due to some form of mechanical vehicle accident (Veysi, 2009). “From the fifty-seven percent of patients, nineteen percent were pedestrians, seventeen percent were drivers of a motor vehicle, and nine percent were motorcyclists” (Veysi, 2009). The majority of cases where a patient receives some form of thoracic trauma are due to vehicle accidents, meaning they were preventable in one way or another. With new technologies and the general population abiding the laws of the road, motor vehicle accidents that cause serious harm the driver or a pedestrian can be

This padding system is more reliable than the an airbag system because an airbag system requires a certain threshold to be surpassed prior to being deployed (Breed, 1991). This padding, is assembled and ready prevent the patient as soon as the impact from another vehicle occurs. Though this device is primarily for the lateral portions of the car interior, the cushion device still impedes some of the force on the driver or passenger during a “T-bone” type of accidents that frequently occur on