Bears’ tight end Zack Miller suffered a gruesome injury in Sunday’s game, dislocating his knee and tearing the popliteal artery. The training staff recognized the severity of the injury and got him immediately to a hospital where they basically saved his leg from being amputated. Question: what were the signs that the training staff saw that told them that the artery was ruptured? How did they (fortunately) know this so quickly?
Torn artery implies internal bleeding on a large to massive scale - I would suspect rapid and massive swelling would be a tip off, and the swollen area might be darkly colored due to blood being the cause of said swelling.
There could also be a lack of pulse below the site of the arterial damage.
There might also be signs of significant blood loss overall - paleness, dizziness, dropping blood pressure, rapid pulse, shortness of breath, and so on which would indicate significant blood loss from somewhere and under the circumstances the injured knee would be the logical place to start looking.
I base this partly on the knee injury I sustained as a teenager. The docs were preoccupied with the quantity and rapidly of swelling and frequently took a pulse in my ankle. As it happened, I did have some bleeding into the joint with that injury but it wasn’t from an artery and did not require surgery.
Ex-EMT here
Broomstick pretty much nailed it in one. the lack of a pulse below the injury is the biggest warning sign under the circumstances. The swelling will take at least a few minutes to become obvious.
Checking pulses distal to obvious bone and joint injuries is part of most EMS protocols for handling such incidents.