Posted on 03/18/2009 7:08:04 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
I get frustrated with these damn TV 'experts' who haven't seen the patient, an x-ray, a blood test or even talked to the attending physician, who get on TV and spout-off on stuff like this.
No, he wasn't drawing any conclusions, he was providing medically factual information about head wounds - and in particular - those that can lead to death.
I made the observation, reading his body language, tone, discussion of the medical facts - that he was experiencing anxiety, dissonance, and surprise at the outcome.
There are health care issues everywhere, but I can tell you having worked with many Dr's, there has been a mass exodus of Dr's out of Canada to the US. UK has the same problem. I had a friend who was recruiting as many physicians as possible to help the NHS catch up on routine surgeries that patients wait years for before giving up. They were setting up a factory with numerous teams working across 3 shifts to catch up on something like 60,000 hip and knee replacements.
How do you think Evil Knievel lived to a ripe old age of 69? Helmets absolutely protect from external blunt traumas. No guarantee, but that's why nearly every state has a law that children must wear a bicycle helmet.
"The momentum of her brain crashing against her skull when coming to an abrupt stop from high speed would not have been cushioned by a helmet cradling the outside of her skull".
A helmet, just like crumple zones in a car, does "cushion" the impact of the brain against the skull. That's why materials like styrofoam is used inside the shell. Styrofoam certainly isn't there to prevent puncture wounds. I hope I didn't sound arrogant, it was just a bit alarming that you made a such an inaccurate statement and I don't want to dissuade youngsters from protecting their brain.
So it’s your contention that a helmet would mitigate the momentum-borne trauma of brain tissue against skull in this instance?
Yes, of course. That’s why helmets were invented. They dampen the impact and spread the force. Dissipation. I was a motocross racer. I’ve seen plenty of lives saved.
I used to be an EMT in Mo. a long time ago & a motorcycle accident survivor. After my accident, I donated my helmet to the bike safety class at MCAS Yuma, Az. If anybody down that way takes this class you might see it.
“They said she has two sons, but I haven’t heard their ages.”
News report yesterday said 13 and 11. Makes this so much sadder.
We won’t know till there’s been an autopsy, but I can’t imagine a fall on a beginner slope that she walked away from could itself cause brain death. Seems to me she could have had a mini-stroke/aneurysm or something of that order that caused the fall, then it came on stronger later. But then I’m not a doctor or a skier.
Had her head hit a tree or a rock - sure! That helmet would have helped.
Again, if you read my original post, I'm not dissing the use of helmets at all - far from it. I'm just still doubtful that in this particular instance it would have done her much good.
I'm certainly open to persuasion how styrofoam on the outside of her skull would have helped slow the momentum of her soft tissue against the inside of her skull. I'm not seeing it yet.
I read New York is where most of her family is based. She has kids who are in school. It makes sense to bring her home.
saw an interview with Fox's medical expert and he described the various injuries and indicated that most are very easy to treat within a certain amount of time. He seemed bewildered...
If this man had not seen the patient, the test results, nor talked with physicians involved, he should not be commenting on the case. This is pure TV entertainment -- cash for commentary --- regardless of how uninformed it is.
I made no comment on the quality or availability of health care in Canada (very dismal, IMHO) but there is no indication from the information available that either the quality or availability of care is at issue here.
My comment is on the media handling (sensalationism) of 'celebrity cases' not on the proper system to deliver medical care.
It's premature to conclude how the unknown type of fall would cause this result.
I can't even begin to imagine how many times I've come to "an abrupt stop" with and without a helmet - going a hell of a lot faster then she could possibly have been going on a bunny hill with wet show - guaranteed - and I'm fine by most accounts.
Speculation is that a preexisting condition caused the imbalance and fall, or triggered the unusual result (e.g. an aneurysm with pressure from bleeding vs blunt trauma). It is exceptionally hard for me to believe that sliding on wet snow can cause fatal deceleration without a precondition. Otherwise, it was blunt force trauma.
I'm not a physics professor, so you'll have to do your own research on this. But what I can say definitively is that a helmet is designed to protect your brain from injury / trauma more then it is from keeping your brains in your skull. If your head hits the ground, you are better off having a cushion around your head to decelerate the overall system. Try an experiment - put an iron pot on your head, then bang it on the flat ground, then put a pillow in the pot and repeat. Remember - the fall doesn't kill - it's the rate of deceleration.
Seat belts save far more lives then they take. They keep you in the car and have some elasticity to reduce the abrupt deceleration. Bicycle helmets are supposed to be good for only one collision since they decompress.
I had a friend who was teaching his 9 year old son how to drive a 3 wheel ATV (no 4 wheelers at the time). Neither were wearing a helmet. My friend was on back, his son accidentally popped the clutch causing a quick jerk and he fell off the back. His head hit the ground from a relatively short distance - and he died.
Like I said before - life is fleeting. Make sure you are ready to meet God since an everyday activity can be your last.
But for some reason you repeatedly mischaracterise my posts as though I had said somewhere - anywhere- that a helmet wouldn't protect from an external injury when that is demonstrably not the case.I said so in my very first post. She SHOULD have been wearing a helmet to protect from crashing into a rock or tree (or particularly skiing on the bunny slopes as she was, into another person.) That's been stipulated from my first post, and repeatedly thereafter. But that type of trauma (EXTERNAL!) is probably not what happened here given what the witnesses said.
I dunno, I seem to be having an inordinate degree of difficulty establishing with you that, from the first post on, I have been speaking of an internal injury & not an external injury. Sigh.
The news account says she had no contusions or lacerations about the head. None at all,, in fact. She fell, got up & went to her hotel room and it's not known whether or not she hit her head at all in her fall in the soft, clear flats. My guess given the resort/instructor's statements is that she didn't, however the ski instructor did the right thing by staying with her to monitor her for an hour afterwards, because her head would not have had to make contact with anything for her to have sustained a brain injury.
And a skier doesn't HAVE to hit his or her head to sustain a brain injury such as hers because the brain can still jerk around violently INSIDE the skull coming to an abrupt stop (crashes forward in the cavity) and/or falling down on the rear end (brain crashes upward) The blunt force trauma occurs within the cranial cavity, in other words, where a helmet would have no chance to do its magic.
Again this is I N S I D E the skull where a crash helmet wouldn't help anymore than a helmet would protect a toddler being shaken back & forth by a crazed babysitter from developing shaken baby syndrome or a bulletproof vest would help a heart patient whose aorta bursts.
It's a common sense given that a crash helmet would protect somebody from EXternal trauma, as I said in my first post, and yet for some reason you keep repeating to me as though I had somewhere said anything to contradict that. And I have repeated my agreement with that common-sense truism in successive responses to you & yet you keep replying as though I hadn't for some reason only you can explain, lol!(I'm not angry at you, merely frustrated.)
Yes, you are 100% right: people come to abrupt stops & fall on their rear ends every day on ski slopes - myself included hundreds of times alone - & nothing happens. Our brains don't swell &/or hemorrhage after our brains bounce around & knock up against our skulls.(So far at least, knock wood.) That's precisely why in my very first post on this thread I speculated that something else might have been going on which may have contributed to her condition, presenting a 'perfect storm' of circumstances, if you will.
Given her age (45) an undetected aneurysm could very well have been present & the vessel may have burst when her brain sustained the INternal trauma that you or I and the thousands of other folks falling on their rears on ski slopes all over the world at this very minute as I write this would be able to just walk away from with no problems an hour later after sustaining similar trauma to our brains.
I will repeat for what I truly hope is the last time what I said in my first post: yes, she should have been wearing a helmet to protect herself for the potential of EXternal injury (crashing into a tree, rock, another skier or her own skis.) That's just a given, of course! A helmet is designed to protect the brain from the very real risk of external trauma (one would think this would be obvious & didn't even require stipulation!)
But according to all the news accounts including this one, that just does not seem to be what happened here so she could have been wearing four helmets and it likely wouldn't have prevented the injuries she sustained.
Unless we can figure out a way to make a helmet which goes inside the head in between the brain & the skull where the violent collision probably occurred in this instance, an injury such as hers WILL occur again, albeit very rarely, even among those wearing helmets to protect them from external injuries. It's terribly tragic, but thankfully not common.
And the truth is, she could just as easily have experienced the same effects had she come to a violent stop in her car (without hitting her head on the steering wheel or contacting the windshield) or falling from roller skates without her head ever contacting the ground.
If as a result of violent motion, the brain hits the INterior of the skull at an optimally vulnerable angle &/or if there is already vascular weakness, people can have problems - helmet or no helmet. That's what I was saying. Again, at no time did I EVER say that a helmet is worthless in protecting from external injuries. Quite the opposite, in fact, if you read my first post.
"But it's not terribly likely a helmet would have helped Ms. Richardson in this case. The injury she sustained would have occurred inside a helmet as well, wouldn't it have?"
Your intimation that the outcome would have been the same with / without a helmet concerned me (and TMSuchman - so I'm not alone), therefore I commented to defend the efficacy of helmets protecting the brain in a fall - even if the brain still bounces against the inside of your skull.
I thought it to be self evident that if someone fell and didn't hit their head whatsoever, then a helmet would not help since it's on the outside of your head. It may moderate osculations with the slight increase in mass (i.e. stabilize), but it may strain your neck too.
If you are suggesting that Natasha was, during her training session, going so fast on a soft bunny hill, fell without hitting her head, and the friction of her ski outfit against the snow caused such rapid deceleration to create a fatal internal brain trauma - to use your slang - "I dunno... Sigh".
You are entitled to your opinion. I'll bet you a Canadian nickle that there are a lot more helmets on the slopes this week and onward until someone famous dies again (like Sonny Bono). I think using a celebrity tragedy to educate people - possibly saving the life of some children who's parents don't know any better - is better then allowing their death to simply be "tragic".
From the comment, a Medical Doctor pontificating on television was not commenting on the benefit of the use of helmets nor the drawbacks of the Canadian health care system. He was commenting on the medical condition of a patient he had not seen. Not only that, he had he seen any tests or x-rays of that person nor had he talked to any physicians who had examined that patient. He had no information whatsoever to base his statements on, yet he was willing to pontificate anyway! (for a fee and free publicity, of course)
IMHO, it is not appropriate for someone in the medical profession to go on TV and make comments about a specific individual when they have no factual basis for those comments. But it happens all the time, and not just in medicine. You see it in law all the time on these damned cable channels. The Duke Lacrosse case is a good example where TV legal pundits for hire damn near ruined the lives of innocent people all for their self-serving motives. I' sick of self-described "experts" pontificating about individuals or circumstances that they know nothing about!
That's the nature of 24-hour news fests where they need to fill 23 of those hours with something else other than news.
I'm damn tired of this crap on all of the cable channels that pretends to be news.
I get your point about people "pontificating" about something they don't know any thing about - such as you here railing about something that you didn't see - describing what was and wasn't talked about...
" Coventry Telegraph By Karen Hambridge on Mar 19, 2009 She was taking lessons and was not wearing a helmet when the slip occurred and she banged the left side of her face. Initially all seemed well and Natasha appeared unhurt, getting up and laughing. She refused to see a doctor and even signed a medical form saying she didn't need help. But the fall had apparently torn a blood vessel in the brain which started a slow bleed. Within a hour she was complaining of headaches, nausea and dizziness and lost consciousness. She was taken to the Centre Hostopial Luarentien where her condition deteriorated. A CT scan revealed a tear in the temporal artery in the left side of the brain and she was immediately transferred to the Montreal Sacre Coeur Hospital.
This is why I persisted in trying to correct your assertion that she didn't hit her head and a helmet would not have helped! Instead, you ignorantly and condescendingly continued to insist in telling me that I don't understand your question or point:
"I dunno, I seem to be having an inordinate degree of difficulty establishing with you that, from the first post on, I have been speaking of an internal injury & not an external injury. Sigh.
Your assertion that deceleration of her forward momentum caused a the fatal trauma was preposterous under the circumstances. Now, maybe you can climb down off your high horse of ignorance and understand what I was trying to get you to understand - physics, biology, and sports. She "banged" her head which tore her temporal artery. This is an external force where a helmet most likely would have reduced the force of the concussion to her brain and probably would have saved her life. Maybe not - the temporal artery may have had a congenital defect. But I bet she has some time in her life taken a spill and lived to this point.
I also made an insinuation that the Canadian socialized medical capabilities may have played a part in her untimely death. As it turns out - Quebec does not have a Medevac helo which would have cut precious time off of the emergency transport while she was hemorrhaging. As the facts unfold, I was right in each of my speculations.
So, please don't implicitly tell people not to wear a helmet - especially if they're skiing in Quebec!
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