Articles Tagged with car accident claim

Fingertip accidents are commonplace amputations at home or on the job. Fingertips can slam in doors, in car doors, while chopping food or when clearing out a lawnmower or snowblower. These types of injuries can involve crushing of the fingertip, tearing of the fingertip or cutting off of the fingertip, including the thumb. The nailbed, soft tissue and bone (phalanx) can be involved in the injury. The tips of the fingers are injured more commonly than the rest of the finger because they are the least likely to escape harm’s way.

These types of amputations are very painful because there are a lot of nerves in the area. They also tend to bleed quite a lot due to a rich blood supply. When an amputation happens, you should elevate the stump and cover the wound with a sterile dry dressing. Apply pressure if needed. If there is a part of the finger that is cut off, it should be wrapped in a moist sterile gauze and placed in a baggie. You should then place the baggie in some ice water. Don’t put the amputated part directly on ice and do not use dry ice to keep the amputated part cold.

Approximately every 115 minutes, someone or something is struck by a train; almost 50 % of all collisions happen at railroad crossings when the automatic warning lights and automatic warning gates are working correctly. The big problem is that people think that even if their car gets stuck on the tracks, the train will be able to stop. In reality, a 150-car train going at fifty miles per hour will need at least a mile to stop.

The fact of the matter is that a car weighs only about 3000 pounds and it must come up against a several hundred ton train. The car almost always loses. These types of accidents cause about 600 deaths per year and injure about 2300 people per year in the US. About 75 percent of automobile/train crashes involve the train hitting the car in the daytime. At night, half of the collisions happen when the car does not see the train at a poorly lit intersection and strikes the train.

Traumatic hemipelvectomies are rare traumatic injuries with a forty percent mortality rate. It happens when half of the pelvis from the pubic symphysis to the sacroiliac joint is pulled away from the rest of the body in an open or closed injury. Because this is a situation that often results in death, it is important for the trauma team to do angiography to assess the circulation to the area, x-rays to determine the extent of the fracture and possibly a CT scan of the pelvis to determine what the injury looks like in three dimensions. Only aggressive surgical treatment can save the person’s life.

Because prehospital care has gotten so good, more and more people are arriving to the trauma centers alive rather than dead. This is a very unstable fracture with ligamentous injury and bony injury with external bleeding in some cases. The pelvic neurovascular bundle is usually destroyed, affecting sensation to the affected, partially-amputated leg.

Motor vehicle rollover accidents are accidents in which the motor vehicle ends up on its side or on its back. In other words, there is no contact between the wheels of the vehicle and the ground. Unfortunately, 2.7 percent of occupants of a motor vehicle were killed in a rollover compared to 0.2 percent of occupants in non-rollover accidents. A total of 33 percent of all fatalities that are related to motor vehicle collisions occurred in rollover accidents as opposed to those accidents where the vehicle does not roll over.

Rollover rates seem to be higher in light trucks and SUVs. Rollovers are less common for the average passenger vehicle and/or minivan. More than any other demographic, male young drivers were the cause of the majority of these type of accidents. Vehicles that roll also tended to be older vehicles carrying multiple occupants. Sadly, many of the rollover accidents were noted to often contain unbelted passengers. Besides the age, sex and type of vehicle demographic, high speed rates at the time of the incident was another component contributing to these accidents.

Unfortunately, kids can be involved in motor vehicle accidents. Hopefully, they are properly restrained and have no problems following an accident. However, some accidents are so severe or if the child is unrestrained, the result can be serious injury, including head injuries in these kids. Head injury happens to be the most common fatality or cause of death in children who are occupants in cars, trucks or other vehicles. There is a great deal of morbidity of death. There are nonlethal injuries related to motor vehicle accidents and they are of great importance clinically. Doctors and researchers want to know the best way to manage these situations so children survive these injuries with a minimum of damage to their body and brains.

The purpose of a recent study was to identify the risk factors for and frequency of significant injury to children who are occupants in a motor vehicle crash. A large surveillance system was established with regard to crashes that was linked to insurance claims information in automobile accidents. A telephone survey was done to obtain the data. Incidents that qualified for the survey were those involving 1990-year cars or newer involved in crashes that had at least one child involved in the crash. The individual needed to be aged 4 to 15 years and the crash had to happen in one of fifteen total states. Data were collected between March of 2000 and December of 2007. A sampling of crashes was collected to undergo the telephone interview which was done with the driver of the car that was the insured vehicle.

Guardrails are found on roads and are designed to keep vehicles from traveling into an area more dangerous than the road. They often deflect the vehicle back into the road, which makes the vehicle prone to collision with traffic, either oncoming traffic or traffic going the same way as the vehicle.

Motorists generally trust that the guardrail will protect them from serious harm. This may be true but the height of a guardrail appropriate for a sedan may cause a rollover accident in a light truck or a motorcyclist might just slip under the barrier, rendering it useless in protecting the rider.

Car surfing is the dangerous practice of standing on the hood or top of a car, “surfing” the car as if it were a surfboard. Some youths consider this a ‘sport.’ It is a practice usually performed by teenagers, some of whom are intoxicated and have poor coordination. Obviously, this is a practice that is fraught with the potential for injury and death.

Trauma from car surfing includes head and spine injuries. A recent study has looked at the neurological injuries resulting from car surfing. The study also addressed why this is a growing ‘trend’ in the nation. For starters, it is portrayed in the media as a “cool thing” to do. Additionally, many teens do not seem to think it is dangerous.

Head injuries, particularly traumatic brain injuries, are a common complication of motor vehicle accidents; some people recover fully from their traumatic brain injury or have minimal complications, while other sustain a permanent disability from their accident.

One study looked at the self-reporting of health complications and other factors affecting a person’s health after a motor vehicle accident. The study was a population-based and cross-sectional study of mild traumatic brain injury patients who sustained their injury from a traffic-related event. The events occurred between December 1, 1997 and November 31, 1999 in Saskatchewan.

Two studies were done to look at various aspects of basilar skull fractures in children. These are fractures through the inferior part of the brain that are associated with raccoon’s eyes and battle signs, which are areas of bruising around the eyes and behind the ears, respectively. Basilar skull fractures can be seen on CT scan of the brain and skull and often do not include any kind of intracranial injuries. The first study was a retrospective review of charts of patients that were discharged from the emergency room or from the hospital with a diagnosis of basilar skull fracture. Each patient had a clinical sign or x-ray evidence of a basilar skull fracture. There was a subgroup of patients with a normal neurological signs and a Glasgow coma score of 15 that had simple basilar skull fractures.

There were 239 patients in the study. A hundred and fourteen patients or 48 percent had simple basilar skull fractures. This group of simple fractures had vomiting at a rate of 6 percent and a meningitis rate of 1 percent. There were no cases of intracranial hemorrhages and no patients with simple basilar skull fractures needed any kind of surgery. The researchers concluded that some patients with simple skull fractures (basilar) may not need to be hospitalized.

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