When you suffer a gunshot wound, and a blood vessel is damaged, but you stop the bleeding with pressure, will the victim die without surgery to fix it...

When you suffer a gunshot wound, and a blood vessel is damaged, but you stop the bleeding with pressure, will the victim die without surgery to fix it or can blood vessels heal themselves?
Probably only if it is not completely sewered right?
Because if you don't dix it, parts of the body stay without blood and would die off i assume...

Disregarding any further complications like infection or embolisms and so on.

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  1. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    You should call 911 right now instead of asking this on here.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      it would usually depend on the type of wound, that being said hoping it would heal on its own even if minor is a fools bargin, in other words if you made this post because you got shot rush to a hospital

      He's clearly asking in context of SHTF, or maybe to confirm/disprove movie logic.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        No, I just don't trust the healthcare system to not put me on a government database

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          Do you have a cell phone?

  2. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Do they not have google in whatever ESL country you come from?

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      You use google?

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Thinks PrepHole is a better source of information than google.

  3. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    I think prior to modern surgery they would amputate and cauterize. I don't think there's any way to survive without some form of intervention.

  4. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    it would usually depend on the type of wound, that being said hoping it would heal on its own even if minor is a fools bargin, in other words if you made this post because you got shot rush to a hospital

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      I didn't get shot but my grandfather in the 60s was involved in a gunfight with criminals and got shot in the leg.
      The bullet hit him in the front of the thigh, hit the femur and left on the outside.
      It was a .32 bullet, but despite this he remembered blood squirting from his leg so that it would actually land some distance away.
      One of his friends who was also in the shootout was a feldsher and he saved his life probably by a lot of pressure on the wound.
      So then they took him back to his village to a butcher who also did veterenarian surgeries on the side and together with the friend they pulled bullet fragments out and saved him, but he doesn't remember the surgery because he slipped in and out of consciousness.
      They went to a doctor then and bought antibiotics and at first the wound inflammed and they feared they would need to amputate, but then it worked and so he kept his leg.

      I am just surprised that he obviously had arterial bleeding but it somehow fixed itself, because i just thought that necrosis came from when blood vessels are damaged and the tissue is undersupplied with oxygen.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Assuming the details of the story are true, I think it's almost certain that an artery was only nicked if pressure stopped the bleeding. Arteries can knit back together like any other tissue, but its much rarer because they are under pressure. Keeping constant pressure on such a wound is difficult, but it can be done with a proper dressing. My guess is that the fragment removal part came after hours of a very tight dressing being used.

        Here's a great example of spurting arterial bleed that is easily controlled with mild pressure:

  5. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Depends on the wound, the body is great at self repairing but actively bleeding under a dressing is a no go. They can transplant, sew up, synthetic patch etc the big ones. Basically you're going to have a hole in you for a while.

  6. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    It depends upon how fast you can get the bullet out. If shot, reach in as fast as possible and feel around for the bullet or any shrapnel inside you.
    If you can't find anything to sterilize your hands and the wound, remember thay dog's saliva has antibacteri properties

  7. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Nope. Can't heal on it's own. Doesn't matter if it's artery or vein. In case of artery: If you aplly pressure or the vessel goes into contraction, the patient won't bleed to death but prolly will get ischeamia of the leg, and lose it or die due to pain shock (from dying leg). Or the lego will start rotting, and he will develop multi organ failure starting with kidney failure.
    As for veins: these won't go into contraction. But that only means that without a suture or applied pressure, the patient will bleed to death. Even getting shot by the smallest bullet possible, due to the bullet diameter, and colateral damage it does, a blood vessel injury needs to be surgically revised. Depending on the patients weight and height, the femoral muscles can hold up to 3 litres of blood. Enough for a cardiac arrest to occur.
    t.surgeon

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      So what happens to femoral arteries during day, a civil war era amputation?
      They can’t leave the thing just cut open with a patch of muscle and flesh sutured over it…the patient would just bleed out inside and swell the stump like a blood balloon until it burst or his heart went on strike.

      Did they cauterize?
      I have to get to Frederick MD and tour the Military Medicine museum there…I think they have General Dan Sickles’ amputated leg from Gettysburg as a display.

      Legend has it he used to go visit it after the war…

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Yup amputation. Fastest way to avoid death. Although vascular surgery was practiced even in ancient Rome to some extent. Anything before ww2 would be best to amputate, cauterize and than visit closest hospital. Due to the scarcity and capacity of hospitals.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        >So what happens to femoral arteries during day, a Civil War era amputation?
        Clamped and cauterized.
        The body is usually pretty good at finding alternate return routemmn0hs to major veins if needed.

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          An elderly person can develop collateral circulation. But that happens due to atherosclerosis. And takes time. If a young human (below 50) had his femoral artery closed it's almost sure that he'll lose the leg. Everything below the knee is supported by the femoral artery. It goes sth like this: femoral a.==>popliteal a. Which divides into 3 separate vessels, around 10 cm below the knee. Closing one of those shouldn't make much dmg, cause the other one should be able to support the leg.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      so a guy who just got his legs blown apart by a bomb has a higher survival rate than a guy who just caught a bullet in an artery in his leg?

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Bodies are weird.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Depends, but if we're talking full gibbed legs, ignoring the concussive trauma (and subsequent internal bleeding), shock, and shrapnel the rest of the body would deal with, you've got better odds with an explosive amputation at the hip than at the thigh, assuming you've got enough of a stub left for a tourniquet. If you don't, things are gonna get ugly fast.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Well technically, putting every other aspect of getting bombed, than yes. If it's a bullet wound, and you have a tourniquet on, you cut off blood flow to the leg. After 4 hours the muscles begin to die and their protein structure falls apart. Said protein fragments go back to the circulatory system reach the veins. And hello kidney failure. After that it's downhill multiorgan failure and sepsis.

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          People have had full recoveries with modern TQs even 12-20 hours after application. Your muscle tissue isnt like organ tissue, it can survive quite a while without blood flow.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      >or die due to pain shock (from dying leg)
      Shock is not related to pain.
      You are not a surgeon.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Ther is sth like "pain shock" which leads to cardiac arrest. And guess what happens if you cut off blood flow to the leg. It starts to die, and hurts like shit. Basic knowledge.

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          Shock in the medical lexicon refers to a syndrome of end-organ dysfunction and cell death secondary to inadequate oxygenation as a result of circulatory failure. It has nothing to do with pain.

  8. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    SEPSIS. END OF STORY.

  9. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    >Because if you don't dix it, parts of the body stay without blood and would die off i assume...
    Correct.

    Now the body has ways to stop bleeding and repair even massive damage to blood vessels, but it takes a bit of time. You apply pressure when the bleeding is so severe that you'd likely bleed out and die before that could happen if you left things as they were. And so prompt surgical help is necessary.

  10. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    just pour rock salt on it and then seal it with a red hot iron poker

  11. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Saving a limb after tourniquet has low odds of success.

    >limb is damaged by having no bloodflow
    >resuming sending the blood (taking off tourniquet) for some unknown reason Damages YOUR TISSUE EVEN MORE.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reperfusion_injury
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK534267/#:~:text=Introduction,essential%20to%20salvage%20ischaemic%20tissues.

    Chances are once the tourniquets goes on you're losing that limb.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      TQs aren't meant to be kept on so long that the limb dies, moron.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      >repeating 20+ years old knowledge and ignoring everything that has happened since then
      Frick off moron.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      Shut the frick up, mediboomer

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      Everything you said is wrong

  12. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Some can some cant depending on the damage and the specific vessle
    Cappilaryes will clot and you will make new ones
    Arterioles .(smoll arteries) ..i dont know
    Arteries?. If severed then no..too much bloodflow to clot and parts of you will necrotise, assuming you dont bleed out, sevvered things in your body that are not in proximity wont magically reatach themselves, especially if one part has no bloodflow (due to extensive damage) , it will necrotise before conective tissue can form a matric for new blood vessles . You will however get secondary healing process (filling the gap with slowly maturing granulose tissue which turns into scra tissue) which could restore a degree of function provided the distal (farthest part) has bloodflow through for example anamosthosis (think of it as reserve vessles your heart has some and they are the reson why some folks survive a 100% blockage if it occured slowly). Blood can be drawn from mayor veins like the juggular but sever that and you are in trouble.
    Best to see a surgeon in case of a mayorbloodvessle damage . Even if it heals on its own , a surgeon can manipulate the tissue so it heals with more function preserved

  13. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    God I don't know why but anything involving the circulatory system physically bugs me out I don't like it
    Nevertheless very informative thread

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      >anything involving the circulatory system physically bugs me out
      Hope you never have to any sort of cardiac catheterization done anon. You know, when they insert a tube into a vessel in your leg or arm or somewhere else and thread it all the way to your heart.

  14. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    The dissonance between the reality of gunshot wounds as discussed in this thread, and the crazy fantasy self defense scenarios posters here talk about that basically require you to go out of your way or make tons of obvious mistakes to even get into, bothers me.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      What do you mean?

  15. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    They'll die if the hole is too big for clotting to clog it before too much blood gets out. You can't just tourniquet it and expect it to heal because it doesn't have a blood supply for the natural healing process to occur. If the wound is too much you're going to bleed out before the slow natural healing process occurs, simple as. Even if you put pressure or a dressing on it, it will still bleed slowly. Slowing the bleeding might be what you need to keep enough blood in before clotting can occur, but generally bullet wounds and most shrapnel injuries are too big for clotting to work in a timely manner.

  16. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    Disregarding any other complications? Yes, pretty much I think if you manage to stop the bleeding the limb will heal itself into a stump. If you disregard infection completely, then the ischemic necrotized tissue will mummify and fall off theoretically. This is it.

    • 10 months ago
      Anonymous

      You'de be suprised to what extent people can survive without blood flow to the leg. Those are scarce case, most usually die, but you may live to see sth like this.

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        Total oclusion of popliteal artery due to atherosclerosis. It takes time, and usually ends in death (either pain shock, either sepsis, doesn't matter). But in this case, and i dunno how on earth was this possible, but the patient developed sth like this.

        • 10 months ago
          Anonymous

          A dedication to his hobby of booting krokodil?

      • 10 months ago
        Anonymous

        damn he might lose that leg

  17. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    If you are bleeding profusely you need stitches or surgery. Bleeding is pretty serious and needs medical attention.

  18. 10 months ago
    Anonymous

    If you can stop the bleed without a TQ you have a solid chance of full recovery on your own if you can keep the wound clean.

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