Gruesome question

I'm not a doctor, nurse, or EMT, but I do know about the artery next to the windpipe being damaged.

Blood can come out of the nose and mouth as well as the throat area, where the wound is, of course. The person can speak a little. In the ER, (not sure about if the EMTs can do this at the site where the person is stabbed) they can administer an IV to coagulate the blood. Several pints will be lost, but blood should be administered as fast as possible. I think the percentage of people who die from the loss of blood from that area is about 90%. A person might pass out after only 15 minutes. A stent can be inserted surgically through side of the neck to the artery to help stop the flow. That surgery, only 10% survive. This has to be done within an hour. Speech usually isn't impaired afterward if the wound is lower in the windpipe, or trachea. Here's a diagram:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate_trachea and here's a diagram that shows the arteries next to the windpipe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gray490.png

It's said (by a surgeon) that people can lose some of their mental faculties or even some use of one side of their body after such a blood loss. Sometimes there are no after-effects.

Again, I'm not in the medical profession, but do know a little something about what you're asking.

Not for me, but my sister. I'm the next of kin and she lives/lived with us (she's now in a vent unit at a rehab place). The windpipe was irritated by the trach tubing and rubbed against the wall, causing an arterial bleed. I've had so many discussions with surgeons over the past few months and just recently had a half-hour look-see and discussion over a normal CT scan and her CT scan of that entire area with a surgeon, that I feel I really do know something.

What she went through, and is still going through, is almost similar to if she had a knife wound to the windpipe. As I said, it's lower than the voice box, so her speech wasn't affected. She was rare in the fact that she survived the bleed and the subsequent surgery, and had no loss of mental faculties or body movement. (The surgeons did say if she lost any body movement, it would be one side of the body, and the mental status would be loss of short-term memory.)

In a knife-wound case, I'm not sure if they'd just put a stent (like a Band-Aid) in the artery through an incision in the neck, or if they'd actually sew it up. Doubtful, since sewing an artery is difficult. That, you'd have to consult a surgeon. Did you try www.allexperts.com ?

And thank you for your condolences! She has a medical condition that's far worse than just having a trach bleed.

Make the cut not arterial, but venous. The obvious artery on the neck is the carotid, supplying the brain, verr big, terrific flow, makes a mess when cut. Even going venous, the biggie is the jugular and it too is verr large diameter.
You can make the person do fine, losing a unit, or pass out losing that same amount (these are the people who cannot donate blood because they get hypotensive). Or you can have the char lose several units. Some folks can tolerate such a loss and be pretty functional, some act drunk or somnolent.
If the tracheal laceration is above the larynx, speech will be affected; even below, the person can have difficulty moving enough air across the vocal chords to be articulate.
Tracheal damage that is repaired will not affect speech unless the larynx was damaged and could not be repaired perfectly.
Sounds like you want your char to die, which is plenty believable. You can have death happen as soon as you want (and be believable), but if death is directly due to blood loss, you do need to have the person pass out first.

If your throat was cut , (ie not enough to kill you straight away, but one of the arteries is breeched, fair bit of blood but it's not splashing up the walls! Windpipe has a hole too) could you tell me:


How long , roughly , would it take to bleed to death

Worst case, the damage is irreversible in 3-5 minutes if the carotid is completely severed and does not close itself off.

http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic531.htm
http://www.healthcentral.com/ency/408/000167.html

If someone has the mother wit to just wad up a t-shirt and apply pressure immediately, it takes longer to die and survival rates go up quickly.
The danger in this is that the other carotid may clamp shut too (there is some sort of connection between them, and pressure on one can make the other one react) and you don't bleed to death, you die from no blood to the brain.

How long, roughly, before you lost conciousness

A couple of minutes, if you don't faint from the pain.

Would you have any mental effects from lack of blood ( and possibly oxygen if the airway was partially blocked with blood) ie hallucinations, auditory phenomena etc

Those people I have seen in blood loss shock or headed for it were "floaty", but that was all. I don't know what they were seeing or hearing on the inside. One (dying of internal bleeding) was lucid for almost an hour, then just stopped responding.

If you survived, given that the windpipe suffered damage, would this affect your speech, and if so how much and for how long?

Unless the larynx id damaged, any speech problems would be from brain damage from inadequate blood flow/oxygen supply.

With cut artery and[then /U] the windpipe you'd have aspirated blood in the lungs which would make the character panic trying to breath through his own blood. This would cause more struggling and a quicker loss of blood/loss of consciousness leading to a faster death.

If the windpipe is cut first then nick a vein on the side of the neck, you may have a longer survival time.

One more thing, if the blood flow is entering the trachea through the mouth or the wound, a field trach (inserting any kind of small, hollow tube into the cut in the trachea) will increase oxygen flow and keep the person conscious longer. I've seen it done with a straw (thick plastic, not like a Mac Donald's straw) in real life and a pen in a movie, though I don't know how the pen would work for oxygen exchange unless someone was blowing into it really hard.

stormie said:

I'm not a doctor, nurse, or EMT, but I do know about the artery next to the windpipe being damaged.

Blood can come out of the nose and mouth as well as the throat area, where the wound is, of course. The person can speak a little. In the ER, (not sure about if the EMTs can do this at the site where the person is stabbed) they can administer an IV to coagulate the blood. Several pints will be lost, but blood should be administered as fast as possible. I think the percentage of people who die from the loss of blood from that area is about 90%. A person might pass out after only 15 minutes. A stent can be inserted surgically through side of the neck to the artery to help stop the flow. That surgery, only 10% survive. This has to be done within an hour. Speech usually isn't impaired afterward if the wound is lower in the windpipe, or trachea. Here's a diagram:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertebrate_trachea and here's a diagram that shows the arteries next to the windpipe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Gray490.png

It's said (by a surgeon) that people can lose some of their mental faculties or even some use of one side of their body after such a blood loss. Sometimes there are no after-effects.

Again, I'm not in the medical profession, but do know a little something about what you're asking.

Click to expand...

Don't trust wikipedia

There are a lot of variables. Without spurting blood, it's highly unlikely that a carotid was severed. Jugulars carry as much blood as carotids so there'd be rapid bleeding but not spurting. There'd still be a lot of blood, but if you apply pressure and lie in a position such that your traumatic tracheotomy is pointed down, the risk of aspiration is minimal and with immediate proper care the person should be fine, but they'd need to lie still, not run around.

Severing a carotid is an entirely different thing. Not everyone has collateral ciculation between the carotids and if this character is one that doesn't, then they'd suffer a nearly immediate major stoke, losing that side (half of the brain and the opposite side of the body from the neck down, almost always lethal or about a minus 100 on IQ). Look at an anatomy text and look at the arterial circulation of the head and then decide if you want to loose all that stuff down stream from the transection.