Salvage death
A rescue death is the phenomenon that supposedly rescued disaster victims , who sometimes had survived hours and days in an awkward situation, suddenly die minutes after the rescue .
Salvage death with hypothermia
The salvage death caused by hypothermia has physiological causes: The human body releases the heat produced by the body through the body surface. If it loses more heat to the environment than the thermoregulation can generate, the blood vessels on the body surface contract and their blood flow decreases. The warm blood concentrates on the vital organs , the so-called core of the body. The temperature of the body shell (skin, arms, legs) drops even further.
If the patient is now actively warmed up, the blood vessels widen and the cold shell blood flows back to the core. This can also happen through an abrupt change of position during transport. If the temperature difference between the core and shell is too large, there is the so-called afterdrop and possibly - for example in Aufwärmungsbad - for reheating collapse , causing it to heart rhythm disturbances of any cardiovascular activity can occur and a standstill. Because of the hypothermia, resuscitation measures are extremely difficult.
Therefore, if possible, the patient should be positioned flat and immobilized . Patients with moderate hypothermia can be warmed with a Hibler heat pack .
Other causes
In the case of disaster victims, such as those who have been buried, the rescue death can often be traced back to the fact that after clearing away debris weighing on the buried subject, blood is supplied to the crushed limbs again and injured structures start to bleed again. With all disaster victims there is also the risk that the noradrenagenic stress reaction will stop. Before the rescue, unconscious persons are in an extremely stressful situation. The stress hormones adrenaline and cortisol maintain the vital organ functions. After the rescue, this stress mechanism is reduced and the blood circulation maintained by the stress hormones collapses.
In the case of shipwrecked people who are rescued from the water, there are two additional dangers: Shipwrecked people usually float almost horizontally in the water, whereby the water pressure exerts a certain pressure on the body immediately below the surface of the water. Are now shipwrecked z. B. pulled out of the water by a helicopter on a winch, the water pressure drops , the vessels expand and the blood sinks into the legs, which leads to an undersupply of the vital organs in the trunk.
Prominent cases and lessons from them
The image of the shipwrecked Frank Ferris, whose boat sank in the Fastnet Race in 1979 , went through the world press. Taken from a Royal Navy helicopter, it shows a rescuer abseiling down to see Ferris floating in the water. Ferris died minutes later on board the helicopter. The lesson was drawn from this that lifeboats for shipwrecked people have doors on the hull in order to enable the most gentle, horizontal rescue possible. Since then, rescue stretchers or rescue cages have been used in helicopters in order to be able to pull shipwrecked people out of the water in a horizontal position.
Individual evidence
- ^ Rainer Fritz Lick , Heinrich Schläfer: Accident rescue. Medicine and technology . Schattauer, Stuttgart / New York 1973, ISBN 978-3-7945-0326-1 ; 2nd, revised and expanded edition, ibid 1985, ISBN 3-7945-0626-X , p. 229 f.
- ↑ The Lessons of the Death Regatta. In: Hamburger Abendblatt. August 7, 2004, accessed July 9, 2015 .
literature
- Deutsches Rotes Kreuz eV, manual for the medical service. German Red Cross - Central Procurement Office, Bonn 1994, pp. 119–122.