LOSING A LIMB DUE TO ACUTE COMPARTMENT SYNDROME:

Journalist Miles O’Brien earlier this week related a harrowing experience that began when a piece of TV equipment fell on his left forearm, leaving it sore and swollen but not enough for him to seek medical treatment. Two days later, after the pain and swelling had increased, a doctor delivered some terrible news to O’Brien. A sharp increase in pressure inside the journalist’s injured forearm was killing the nerve cells and damaging the arteries and veins. Hours later doctors amputated the dying limb.

O’Brien had experienced a medical condition known as acute compartment syndrome in his lower arm as a result of his injury. The condition—which can affect the arms, hands, legs, feet and buttocks—develops when pressure builds up within groups of muscles, nerves and blood vessels that together compose compartments in different areas of the body. Sheets of relatively inflexible connective tissue called fascia cover these compartments. Too much pressure within these fascia-bound compartments disrupts blood flow, damaging vessels and tissue.

Ugh.