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#1
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06-25-2011, 04:10 PM
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 ♚ Legacy Gold Member ♚ Poster Rank:34 Female Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 43,403
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Foot Caught In Industrial Power Grinder
This patient was at work cleaning an industrial "power grinder" in a sheet metal factory. He noticed that something was caught between two of the grinding wheels. The wheels are designed to have sheets of metal "fed" between them and pulled into and through the mechanism which "grinds" both surfaces of the sheet. The patient attempted to kick free the material caught between the grinding wheels and had his foot pulled into the wheels and feeding mechanism. He was wearing steel toed boots with heavy soles and thus the sole of his foot and toes were spared injury. The top of the boot (around the laces) was stripped away and his foot was crushed and caught in the grinder from above. Despite the horrific appearance of this patient's injury the foot was felt by our orthopedic surgeons to be entirely salvageable. There was crush and transection injury to the dorsalis pedis artery but the blood supply was intact via the posterior tibial artery. He had fair sensation in the toes and was able to flex them! The multiple mid-foot fractures are severe but repairable using plates and fixators and most of the extensor tendons could be salvaged well enough to allow for a functional foot. Skin grafting was felt to be a likely future need to repair the extensive soft tissue loss; however, most of the torn and partly avulsed tissue was actually salvaged in the OR. Lucky man!  ·  ·  ·  · |
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#3
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06-25-2011, 05:18 PM
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 So Fucking Banned Poster Rank:338 Male Join Date: May 2010 Posts: 3,766
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Re: Foot Caught In Industrial Power Grinder
Great story Sharon. That's what I like. Photos and the background information. Some of us don't really get off on gory stuff but we like to know WTF actually happened and how it was dealt with. It's great you can help this guy even if he violated the cardinal rule of how not to stick any part of your body in a powerful machine. I made that mistake a couple times in my life and was spared injury both times. First time I was totally careless as a child in our food processing plant and allowed my t-shirt to get caught on a pulley shaft. My aunt grabbed my shirt and ripped it off before I got wound up. Second time as a teen ager I was working in a broom shop and after performing the same assembly job thousands of times I lost focus and hit the clamp lever for a machine while my hand was positioning a broom inside the clamp. Fortunately the clamp was not all that strong and was powered by air pressure. It hurt and bruised but no bones were broken. This poor guy was no so lucky but he was and is lucky to have you and your team caring for his wound.  btw you get 5 stars from me. First person account with history and great photos. |
