Can you survive a gunshot

Begin CPR if the patient is not breathing,. This could be deadly. In some cases, a gunshot wound to the chest can be a seal-sucking wound that creates a pathway for air to enter the chest. For gunshot wounds to the chest, seal the wound with some type of plastic to keep air from being sucked into the wound.

This helps prevent the development of a collapsed lung. If the patient begins complaining of worsening shortness of breath after you seal the wound, remove the seal. A gunshot wound to the abdomen can cause severe bleeding, as well as organ damage and abdominal wall damage. A wound that punctures the stomach or intestines can lead to an infection due to leaking of gastrointestinal fluid or feces into the abdominal cavity. You might notice rapid swelling of the abdomen, even with a relatively small puncture wound.

For abdominal gunshot wounds, be sure to hold pressure on the wound. Emergency surgery is generally necessary. A gunshot to a limb is likely to cause a vascular injury, and it may cause nerve damage or broken bones as well.

In general, you should avoid moving a limb that has been shot. Preventing blood loss by holding pressure is the best approach you can take while waiting for medical help to arrive. A gunshot wound to the spine can cause paralysis, and a wound to the front of the neck can damage the carotid artery , potentially preventing blood from reaching the brain. Don't move someone who has been shot in the neck or back, as movement could damage the spinal cord , leading to permanent paralysis.

And if someone was shot in the front of the neck, hold pressure to prevent bleeding. Gunshot wounds are not straightforward, and they can cause injuries beyond the visible puncture site. Bullets can bounce around inside a person's body, and various dynamics affect their path. A bullet can remain in the body, or it can exit after doing substantial damage. The physical damage caused by a gunshot injury depends on several key factors:. While all of these are important, the speed of the bullet is the most significant factor on the amount of damage done by the round.

Rifles, for example, produce significantly faster-velocity projectiles than handguns, and therefore typically cause more severe injuries. That's not to say that handguns are not dangerous, just that rifles are generally even more dangerous. One method that's used to calculate damage is by multiplying the mass weight of the round by the velocity of the round squared.

Since the speed of the round is squared in this equation, doubling the speed quadruples the energy and the damage. A bullet may be composed of materials that can degrade inside the body. Surgical removal of a bullet is often urgent, but it is done carefully to avoid further damage. If you are ever dealing with a gunshot wound, the key priorities are staying safe, calling for help, stopping the bleeding, and keeping the wound clean.

You will need to make some quick decisions, but the more prepared you are, the better the outcome will be. Sign up for our Health Tip of the Day newsletter, and receive daily tips that will help you live your healthiest life. The first aid and hospital treatment of gunshot and blast injuries. Dtsch Arztebl Int. A 9mm bullet, which is typically fired from handguns used for self-defense and by police, travels at a speed of about mph.

All that momentum has to go somewhere, so the bullet transfers it to your body , causing it to expand and create a large cavity, then falling back in on itself. After the bullet tears into your flesh, fate rolls the dice. Blood loss, which Narciso asserts is the number one preventable cause of death on the battlefield he says that about 90 percent of those preventable deaths are due to blood loss.

They cut through arteries and veins without alerting your muscles to the danger. The other danger, of course, is organ damage that leads to organ failure. If a bullet strikes a vital organ, it will tear through it the same way it did with your outer flesh.

What about bulletproof materials like kevlar , you ask? Think of the bullet as a soccer ball, and the kevlar—as well as your flesh behind it—being the net. Rifle rounds will go right through it. As stated, surviving a gunshot largely comes down to luck.

Still, there are a few things you can do to increase your odds of survival. How does it feel when it happens? Of course, many victims say the worst part is feeling their own warm blood pour all over their body. He would then be seen by a trauma surgeon or chest surgeon and immediately undergo surgery to remove the bullets if possible and to repair the damaged lung or whatever else was injured.

He could recover quickly without complications and go home in a week, rest there for a couple of weeks, return top part time work for a few weeks and be full speed by 3 to 4 months. Or he could have one of any number of complications and die. Or be permanently disabled, etc. It all depends upon the nature of Injuries, the treatment, and luck.

Q: I have a question regarding gunshot wounds. In my latest mystery, a man and a woman, my heroine, struggle for a gun. It goes off, hitting the man in the chest. I want the man to live, but be temporarily incapacitated and need hospital care, so if the chest isn't the best location, other suggestions are welcome.

What would the gunshot wound likely look like before and after the man's shirt was removed? Would there be a lot of bleeding where my heroine would take his shirt off and stuff it over the wound?

A: A gunshot wound GSW to the chest would work well. For it to be quickly fatal, the bullet would have to damage the heart or the aorta or another major blood vessel, such as the main pulmonary lung arteries. Under these circumstances, bleeding into the chest, the lungs, and around the heart would likely be extensive and death could be almost instantaneous or in a very few minutes. He could survive even these injuries, but this would require quick and aggressive treatment, including emergent surgery, and a pile of luck.

If the bullet entered the lung, the victim could die from severe bleeding into the lung and basically drowning in his own blood. Or not. He could survive such an injury and would then require surgery to remove the bullet, control the bleeding within the lung, and repair the lung itself.

This would require a couple of hours of surgery, a week in the hospital, and a couple of months to recovery fully. The bullet could simply embed in the chest wall and never enter the chest cavity. It could bounce off the sternum breast bone or a rib and deflect out of the chest, into the soft tissues of the chest wall, or downward into the abdomen. Once a bullet strikes bone, it can be deflected in almost any direction.

Sometimes full body X-rays are required to find the bullet. If the bullet simply embedded beneath his skin or against a rib or the sternum, he would require a minor surgical procedure to remove the bullet and debride clean-up the wound.

He would be hospitalized for only 2 to 3 days and would go home on antibiotics and basic wound care. Close-range, but not direct muzzle contact, wounds typically have a small central entry wound, a black halo called an abrasion collar, and often an area of charring around the wound.

The charring comes from the hot gases that exit the barrel with the bullet. In addition, there is often tattooing, which is a speckled pattern around the entry wound. This is from the soot and unburned powder that follows the bullet out of the muzzle and embeds tattoos into the skin. The spread of this pattern depends upon how close the muzzle is to the entry point, If it over about 3 feet, then no tattooing or charring will occur.