Laceration Injuries Can Be Serious And Potentially Deadly

When people are in an accident and they suffer a laceration, they often will dismiss it as “just a cut.” Or, the other side or the insurance company for the other side, will try to minimize the severity of the injury by saying its “just a cut.”

Yes, lacerations can be scrapes or minor cuts. But a laceration can often be much, much more serious.

How Lacerations Happen

Lacerations can certainly happen when skin impacts something sharp, or a sharp edge. But it also can happen when skin is stretched to its limit, and the skin tears. Imagine part of your body being wedged under or below a force, while the rest of your body goes the other way. The skin can easily tear, and that laceration will be very serious.

If a part of your body is crushed, it isn’t just the bones or internal organs that can be damaged. The skin can also tear as well.

Often, when parts of the body rub against hard surfaces (such as a roadway, after a body is ejected from a vehicle), the scraping of the surface against the skin can cause the skin to completely tear off. This is often called a degloving injury.

Digits, like fingers and toes, can also deglove, when they are trapped inside machinery or in a door or some other force, that takes the skin off the way someone would take a glove off.

Damages and Injuries After Serious Lacerations

These are serious injuries, the most immediate of which is shock from loss of blood. Losing too much blood can be deadly, as can the shock that ensues.

Even when the external laceration heals, it can heal with severe scarring and disfigurement. A victim can get damages for the pain and embarrassment of physical disfigurement. If you happen to work in a job where your body is part of your livelihood—say, a news anchor, or a model of some sort—the scarring can also lead to a significant loss of income, that you can recover as damages in a lawsuit.

The resulting scarring can not only be visually noticeable, but the part of the body that has scarred over can lose flexibility—scarred skin doesn’t have the same malleability that normal skin has.

Nerve damage under the skin can also cause a loss of feeling or sensation in body parts. Surgeries that go beyond the skin may be needed, to restore feeling, or the functioning of nerves that were severed along with the skin in the laceration injury.

Healing Properly Matters

Large open wounds may have to remain open, at least at first, before they heal. This can make a victim prone to infection. Many people don’t get immediate help for lacerations, thinking it will just heal on its own, or that there is nothing a doctor can or will do. But leaving a wound untreated can lead to infection.

Our Rhode Island personal injury lawyers at Robert E. Craven & Associates are here to help you no matter what kind of injury you suffer in an accident. Call 401-453-2700 today.

Source:

emedicinehealth.com/cuts_or_lacerations/article_em.htm