The result of complicated severe injuries associated with fractures of tubular and pelvic bones, often becomes fat embolism. The disease also occurs with anaphylactic or cardiogenic shock, pancreatitis, surgical intervention and the state of clinical death. To prevent terrible consequences, you need to know what is fat embolism, and how you can prevent it.
The onset of fat embolism syndrome
Medical statistics are inexorable: young men are most often the victims of fat embolism. But this does not mean that the disease can not develop in women or in representatives of other age categories. The pathogenesis of the disease has not been studied enough, so it is not possible to explain exactly why a fat embolism occurs. But there is a hypothesis that when a trauma microscopic particles of fat, combining into large enough emboli, block capillaries and small blood vessels. As a result of subsequent hydrolysis, fatty acids and other products are formed which aggressively affect the internal surface of the vessels in the organs.
Symptoms of fat embolism
In the first hours of fractures, signs of fat embolism are not visible, but droplets of fat are already starting to accumulate in the blood. After a day or two, when there is a blockage of a significant number of capillary lumens, the patient has tiny hemorrhages in the upper chest area, in the neck and in the armpits. Accompanying the disease:
- shortness of breath ;
- dry cough;
- tachycardia;
- blood overflow of segmented vessels of the ocular retina.
The patient has cyanosis, fever and confusion.
The resulting fatty thrombus can be in a state of rest, but sometimes it enters the vital organs with a blood stream. At the same time, as a result of a thrombus entering the heart muscle, acute cardiac insufficiency develops, lungs respiratory failure, kidney failure kidney failure. If a blood clot enters the brain, a person is affected by a stroke. Precisely establish the diagnosis helps the blood test to identify fat embolus (Gard's method).
Treatment of fat embolism
In many ways, the effectiveness of treating fat embolism depends on the timeliness of first aid in case of injuries and rapid transportation of the victim. With a small embolus, special therapy is not required, since fat is gradually eliminated from the body with urine or absorbed by the cells. Such patient is shown complete rest and subcutaneous injection of 30% ethyl ester.
With severe fat embolism:
- Artificial ventilation is carried out.
- Appointed drugs that accelerate the cleavage of fatty structures and inhibit the absorption of fat in the capillaries, vessels:
- glucocorticoids;
- Lipostabil
- Pentoxifylline;
- Compalin;
- Essentiale , etc.
Prevention of fat embolism
Prevention of fat embolism is the rapid conduct of a surgical operation for fractures (limb amputation is not excluded). In the first day the patient should be under close supervision, and all medical procedures should be carried out with extreme caution. Before transporting the patient, immunobilizing dressings are applied. When getting craniocerebral trauma, you need an early appeal to a neurologist, since in this case it is extremely difficult to diagnose fat embolism.