List Archives

Tue Sep 18 19:49:08 BST 2007

>
> Survivors after a plane crash always have major injuries. Including burns.

Dr. Mattox,
You know I respect your opinion a great deal and 99 times out of 100 would
defer to your superior experience, but I have to speak up on this
assertion.  While a certain percentage do, it is not an universal
occurrence.  I can not give specific numbers just yet, as I am still
compiling them, but my current major research project is on this very matter
with the goal of establishing the largest aviation accident injury pattern
database available.  I think you would be surprised how many people are
listed as "minor/uninjured" after even devastating aviation accidents.

To use the worst aviation disaster in history (the collision of two 747s on
the runway at Tenerife in March 1977) as an example, out of the passengers
and crew on the Pan Am 747- the only one of the two aircraft to have any
survivors- there were 326 fatalities,
34 severely injured, and 36 listed as minor/uninjured.  Both planes were
fully (or nearly fully) fueled at the time of collision and yet the majority
of the survivors were did not suffer catastrophic injuries.

The data for my own project, thus far, seems to indicate that persons tend
to either suffer immediately fatal injury or relatively minor injuries.
While burns are a common phenomenon in these patients, they are also not
seen as an across the board factor.  Most of the patients that have been
coded for so far in my project that suffered burns were otherwise fatally
injured prior to the infliction of the burn injury and therefore would never
enter the trauma system.  Those who were not otherwise mortally injured, but
still suffered severe thermal injury, tended to be deceased on the scene.
Most of these individuals were somehow incapacitated (entrapped by wreckage
or suffered major orthopedic trauma) preventing their escape from fire
impingement upon the cockpit or passenger cabin.

-- 
Stephen L. Richey, CRT

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."- James
Thurber

List Archives

For your convenience, find the Trauma List Archive Below

trauma-list Digest, Vol 51, Issue 27