Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Faceplant

A 16 year old girl was riding her dirt bike when her friends saw her head into a ditch. The girl then hit a rock at the bottom and the bike came to a quick stop. Unfortunately, she did not come to a quick stop for about a half second more when her face hit another rock.


Thankfully she had been wearing her protective equipment. Although the force of the impact did crack her chest piece and her helmet. Her face took quite a pounding.

She had an inch and a half gash on the right side of her jaw. Her jaw had probably been fractured. She had knocked four of her teeth almost all the way out and had bit her tongue, all of which caused significant bleeding, not to mention pain.

We placed her in a cervical collar and checked the rest of her out. We decided, because of the amount of bleeding in her mouth, that placing her on a backboard would lead to a possible airway compromise so we decided to c-spine her on a KED. Not a common use but it served our purposes.

Once that was done I started a line on her and gave her some morphine. By the time that AMR was ready to load her up she was packaged and almost pain free.

Just imagine how bad it would have been without the helmet.
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8 comments:

  1. MelanieFebruary 1, 2011 at 7:17 AM

    Ouch! At least she was wearing the protective gear.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SilliyakFebruary 1, 2011 at 7:22 AM

    No helmet, probably no pain.....or pulse, or respirations.
    Good job.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LaurenFebruary 1, 2011 at 8:32 AM

    Yikes! That KED sure comes in handy sometimes.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jen at Cabin FeverFebruary 1, 2011 at 4:20 PM

    Makes me shudder to think about what it would be like without a helmet. Its also a good thing it was fitted correctly...

    Good job.

    ReplyDelete
  5. brianFebruary 2, 2011 at 5:58 AM

    Ugh...head wounds...all that blood :)

    BTW, I have a new blog address:

    http://www.thedamageisdone.net/

    ReplyDelete
  6. UnknownFebruary 2, 2011 at 7:00 AM

    Another FF wife lost a 12 year-old girl in their circle - 4 wheeler - no helmet. This whole ff wife gig is making consider wrapping the kids in bubble wrap before sending them out.

    Thanks for taking care of her.

    ReplyDelete
  7. AnonymousMay 14, 2013 at 9:07 PM

    Just out of curiosity I am an EMT in MA and NY, when we KED someone we have to place them on a backboard. Is the protocol different in CA?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Firefighter/ParamedicMay 30, 2014 at 3:00 PM

    Anonymous- Here in CA protocols vary from county to county. Where I work we have a very liberal c-spine protocol that allows us to determine what level of spinal immobilization is needed if at all. This allowed us to secure her with just a collar and KED since it allowed us to keep a better control on her airway.

    .....maybe I'll do a post on our c-spine protocol....

    ReplyDelete

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