Care of the Patient with a Crush Injury

Course overview

In 2010, we witnessed heartbreaking scenes from Haiti as rescue teams dug beneath the rubble looking for victims trapped after the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit on January 12th. In the aftermath of the disaster, officials tallied the dead at 316,000 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2011). History tells us that many of the injured involved in disasters of this type sustain crush injuries or crush syndrome. In other earthquakes that have caused major architectural/structural damage, the incidence of crush syndrome is around 2 to 15%, according to the CDC (2011).