Abstract
Understanding the physical forces and mechanisms involved in accidents and traumatic events helps practitioners build a comprehensive picture of an incident scene and assess the likely effects that these may have had on any patients involved. This additional information will improve situational awareness and help guide the response, urgency, destination and immediate management of the injured patient.
In this chapter, we provide the reader with an understanding of the forces involved in different injury mechanisms and a way to categorize different mechanisms.
The chapter then focuses on commonly encountered mechanisms, including road traffic accidents from the perspective of different road users and pedestrians. We also look at falls from height and equestrian related accidents to give some insight into how the mechanism can affect the severity of injury and the injury pattern.
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Woolley, T.G.D., Dick, S., Reid, D. (2022). Mechanism of Injury. In: Lax, P. (eds) Textbook of Acute Trauma Care . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83628-3_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-83628-3_21
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