Tzu Chi Hospital in Dalin recently admitted a woman surnamed Chen, aged 159. She loves sports on weekdays, but she has a history of knee cruciate ligament injury. It is expected that when she was doing yoga a few days ago, her left leg suddenly cramped and fell down, and her left knee was dislocated because her knee landed. Later, when I was sent to the hospital for reduction, I found a blood vessel rupture in my knee.
High risk of amputation caused by popliteal artery rupture.
In order to avoid the expansion of emergency, cardiac surgery and plastic surgery were started, vascular connection and fasciotomy were carried out, and finally she was rescued from the crisis of amputation. Cardiovascular surgeon Huang Shiming pointed out that the knee joint is the most fragile joint in the whole body, especially the dislocation of the knee joint. Once the blood vessel ruptures, it must be dealt with urgently.
Because there is a fat artery in the knee joint, it is usually easy to damage the fat artery when the knee joint is dislocated or reset, and there is only one fat artery. If it is broken, there will be no blood supply at the distal end, and the foot will start to swell and get cold, and even turn purple-black, which may lead to amputation.
Gold prevents muscle necrosis for 6 hours.
In general, the treatment of popliteal artery blood vessels needs to restore perfusion within 6 hours as much as possible to reduce the ischemic time and damage to limb blood vessels. When the patient arrived at the hospital, the left leg tissue was bleeding and swollen, feeling abnormal, unable to move, close to acute hypoxia, and in a very critical state.
Therefore, the emergency team urgently used the great saphenous vein on the foot for bypass surgery to connect the two ends of the broken blood vessel and restore tissue perfusion. However, due to the cavity syndrome caused by the rising pressure, Huang, director of plastic surgery, performed fasciotomy at the first time to release the pressure and reduce the risk of muscle tissue necrosis and amputation.
Dislocation of knee joint: ice compress for pain relief+fixation
Finally, the doctor reminded that once the knee joint is dislocated, the highest guiding principle is "don't move" in addition to ice compress to relieve pain, and immediately fix the dislocated part, because dislocation not only affects the joint bones, peripheral blood vessels and nerves, but also will be pulled. Improper movements may over-pull these important tissues, causing serious injuries.
In addition, except obesity, all high-intensity traction exercises may affect joint activities, such as football, basketball, badminton and rugby. Or people with knee injuries should use knee pads to protect them during activities to avoid joint injuries and dislocations.
Dr. Huang Shiming (right) used the great saphenous vein in her foot for bypass surgery, which saved the woman surnamed Chen (left) from amputation. (Photo courtesy of Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital) The doctor reminded that once the knee joint is dislocated, the highest guiding principle is "never move" in addition to ice compress to relieve pain.