There’s not really a not dense way to ask this so apologies for the bluntness. When someone has a limb amputated, it’s a long, arduous surgery. But when people are in accidents and lose a limb and live, I’m assuming they have some kind of surgery to fix the damaged tissue? Is the intentional amputation safer? Quicker? More cost effective?
Thanks in advance!
In: Biology
If someone loses a limb in an accident, they then have a long arduous surgery to reassemble the stump.
Surgery is a much more controlled process than hacking off a limb. Doctors have precise control over where the cut is made, and what muscles/blood vessels/nerve endings/bones are preserved. Not only does this dramatically reduce the risk of the patient bleeding out vs blunt amputation, but it effects what prosthetic options a patient has post amputation.
The added risk and potential loss of function aren’t worth any time saving benefits. Time is cheap, loss of life/function is forever.
> But when people are in accidents and lose a limb and live
You’re ignoring the ones where they lose a limb and *don’t live* because of it.
The amputation surgery has to think about the future – what remains (after healing) should lend itself well to prosthetics. So, for example, the surgeon and patient would really want the amputation to be AFTER a joint rather than before, so that the person can use that point with the prosthetic and have more mobility.
So in your typical amputation, it would be a one shot deal where they slowly work on the amputation to prepare it for a future prosthetic.
I personally have seen amputations with things like gangrene, where the surgery can’t wait and the gangrene is killing a person. In this case, the surgeon just goes nuts and cuts off the gangrenous limb as fast as possible, they don’t care about the details or the prosthetic. Once it’s healed up, they go back and revise it for prosthetic use with a second surgery.
Simply hacking a limb off is quite dangerous. The bleeding will be profuse and uncontrolled, you’re damaging all kinds of bones, blood vessels, and nerves, you’re opening up a huge wound that could get infected, and you’re not taking any effort to leave some skin to make a decent-looking healed stump.
In extreme situations it’s necessary, like in battlefield surgery, sometimes the surgeon does basically take a saw and just cut an arm or a leg right off. But as I said, that’s dangerous.
If it’s not such an extreme scenario like that, you can take the time to amputate right, to leave the right stuff intact and prevent a nasty infection or ugly disfigurement or more severe disability.
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