Word: gunshots
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...fairly straightforward compared with many of the messy youth shootings that confront E.R. doctors nowadays. Yet the woman's attempted suicide proved to be an epiphany for the young physician who attended her. It not only altered his life and career but also would affect countless other victims of gunshot wounds--and would have a major effect on the national debate over gun control...
Indeed, according to Wintemute, gunshot wounds are about 7 1/2 times as likely to result in death as attacks with a knife--and 145 times as likely as blows from feet or fists. Gunshots tear through flesh and bone with the force of a tornado, destroying everything in their path and, depending on the kind of bullet, spreading damage well beyond their trajectory...
...energy goes into leading a crusade against the "national epidemic" of gun violence--which, with 35,000 deaths a year, he says, "ranks among the top-10 killers of Americans, after cancer, heart disease and automobile deaths." It is an extremely costly epidemic too; the annual bill for treating gunshot wounds inflicted only in assaults is more than $63 billion...
...ways. It has shown, for example, that some people who are legally entitled to buy guns are very likely to commit crimes with them, and that denying them the right to buy weapons can actually reduce crime. "I realized," says Wintemute, "that the most effective way to treat a gunshot wound was to keep it from happening in the first place...
From his experience with hundreds of gunshot victims, Wintemute knows only too well that their wounds are among the hardest for doctors to deal with. The gaping holes torn into the flesh by bullets of any kind can easily destroy major organs, unleash torrents of blood, produce severe infection and in general cause widespread bodily mayhem. Gunshot wounds also account for a major part of the rise in spinal injuries in the U.S.; even the grazing passage of a bullet along the spinal cord can be enough to cause paralysis. Two-thirds of gunshot victims do not live long enough...