Death from disembowelment - how long?

[Zsofia]

@picunurse

Not true. The bowel can and does slither out of the abdomen when opened. It can happen after abdominal surgery when, for various reasons, the wound dehisces. I’ve seen it once. Because the patient was on a bed that burbles air through sand-like pellets, the bed surface moved constantly. The bowel fountained out before any of us could turn the bed off. It was quite horrifying. The patient was taken back to surgery immediately, but much of the large intestine had already died.

Another patient with almost total disembowelment was a stabbing victum. His intestine fell onto the sidewalk. He was in the ICU for 7 months.

How does the intestine die in a case like that? Does exposure to air do it? (Does it dry out?) Blood loss? Is there any way to save your organs if they should by some mischance fall out of you, like how you put a tooth in milk?

[pravnik]

Even if you didn’t die right away, I expect that your quality of life would be greatly diminished. A surprising number of daily work and leisure activities require that a person be properly emboweled.

[Mangetout]

@Blake

That sounds way too low to me. A femoral is only 10mm diameter or ~75mm^2 area. Each renal artery by itself is 6mm, so that alone makes up ~50mm^2. I’m guessing all the abdominal organs would be at least twice the area of a femoral artery.

Fair enough - thanks for the clarification. I think I chanced to place the expiration time (a few minutes) into the right ballpark though.