[quote=“Cartooniverse, post:35, topic:808957”]
LOLOL. Well. As a retired E.M.T. I can deal in facts and not hyperbole.
I know nothing of cauterizing wounds that way.
Apparently it’s actually a thing:eek:
Sure, but A) You’re a trained EMT and B) I assume your patients aren’t up kicking ass minutes later.
I would assume that the entire bullet would heat up from both the propellant and the friction of moving through the atmosphere at several hundred m/s).
But would it heat up enough to sterilize?
Hate to bring him up twice in the same thread, but I’m pretty sure it was Theodore Roosevelt that forced the issue of germs, bacteria and cleanliness on the army during the building of the Panama Canal. From there is finally spread to the American Medical Community.
Makes me wonder: could his caring about germs in an era when others didn’t have been part of what made him seem an indestructible badass?
I’ve never heard that it was Roosevelt who had anything to do with that. The issue with the building of the Panama Canal was not germs or bacteria per se, but diseases that were spread by mosquitoes like malaria and yellow fever. The US, under the direction of William Gorgas, “cleaned up” Panama City and the Canal Zone, but it was to get rid of mosquito breeding areas, not to get rid of germs directly.
Bullet wounds aren’t sterile.
Lots of bullets have an entry point and an exit point.
If it is lodged, it matters if it has hit a nerve or blood vessel, organ, bone, joint, etc. I’ve seen someone die from a bullet fragment that embolizes to the heart. If it is in fatty flesh, it might be tough to get out (but easier under ultrasound or fluoroscopy).
If there are many pieces, the smaller and anatomically safe pieces might well be ignored.
Bullets close to the heart, brain and spinal column make trauma teams nervous.
I know an Aussie who was shot in the face in Thailand about 1990 and claims still to be carrying the bullet in his head.
Assuming the bullet is moving at the speed of sound (about right for a handgun), and assuming an ambient temp of about 70F, adiabatic heating due to compression will generate a temp of around 150F at the very flattest part of the front of the bullet; the temp will be lower everywhere else. The bullet material itself is cold, so exposure to 150F air for a few milliseconds won’t heat up the surface very much; any bacteria there will do just fine. Contrast this with an autoclave, which applies moist heat at about 250F for 15-20 minutes to achieve true sterilization.
Even if we suppose the bullet is truly sterile, the target’s skin is not - unless the shooter was courteous enough to swab the target’s skin with Betadine for a few minutes before shooting him.
Foreign bodies which are left in muscle tissue eventually become encapsulated by scar tissue and can remain asymptomatic for years or decades. Absent infection, they are usually only a problem when they are close to sensitive areas (major blood vessels, organs) or they migrate to those areas over time; or, when their location prevents angiogenesis, or the “re-routing” of blood vessels around the foreign obstruction. the body reacts to internal prostheses the same way it does to bullets or other foreign matter, except that protheses are generally sterile.
I did some searching. Apparently someone actually did a study by firing contaminated bullets into sterile ballistics gel. I don’t have an account to read anything more than the abstract. But it would appear that the in-flight conditions of a bullet do not guarantee sterilization.
Yes, that is it. I had it all jumbled up. It was explained to him and he gave the order to facilitate the clean up. These measures then spread.
As I understand it, the reason Army Surgeons in the Civil War were so quick to amputate wounded extremities is that the Minie Ball ammunition commonly used by both sides was extremely good at dragging bits of clothing into the wound with itself.
The grooves in the bullet tended to catch the cloth as it went through, shredding little bits off and bringing them into the wound. Since the uniform had likely been worn for several weeks without significant washing, while living rough in the field, it would have been a prime source of nasty bacteria.
Lacking an effective means of sterilizing a deep penetrating wound, it was deemed preferable to sacrifice a limb to prevent the fatal gangrene that would likely follow.
Definitely, a bullet lodged within a joint can cause significant joint abnormality (“lead arthropathy”) and high systemic lead levels. Basically, the synovial fluid is good at dissolving out lead from the bullet. Especially after mechanical forces in the joint break the bullet up into small fragments.
(This probably does not apply to the baseball player- the term hip is used pretty loosely, even by doctors, and can encompass a pretty large territory in and near the hip joint, including the buttock.)
Two articles on lead arthropathy.
https://www.ajronline.org/doi/full/10.2214/ajr.176.5.1761144
http://www.baylorhealth.edu/Documents/BUMC%20Proceedings/2017_Vol_30/No_1/30_1_McAninch.pdf