WORLD
April 6, 2011 | By Tony Perry, Los Angeles Times
Grim combat statistics that one military doctor called "unbelievable" show U.S. troops in Afghanistan suffered an unprecedented number of catastrophic injuries last year, including a tripling of amputations of more than one limb. A study by doctors at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, where most wounded troops are sent before returning to the U.S., confirmed their fears: The battlefield has become increasingly brutal. In 2009, 75 service members brought to Landstuhl had limbs amputated.
HEALTH
January 17, 2011 | Marc Siegel, The Unreal World
The premise Twenty-seven-year-old Aron Ralston ( James Franco) is a mechanical engineer and thrill-seeker. He is in Utah's Blue John Canyon when he falls down a narrow canyon, and his arm is pinned by a large chalkstone boulder. He watches as his fingers turn blue and gray from insufficient blood flow (ischemia). Though he doesn't appear to be in pain, he is unable to free himself. He has very little food and water, and finally, as he grows dehydrated, he drinks his own urine.
ENTERTAINMENT
October 31, 2010 | By John Horn, Los Angeles Times
Two at the Telluride Film Festival, three at the Toronto International Film Festival and one at the Mill Valley Film Festival. If that were a list of trophies for the new movie "127 Hours," which opens Friday, the filmmakers would be overjoyed. In fact, it's a partial tally of people who have collapsed during early screenings of the movie about a real-life hiker who amputated his forearm after a falling boulder pinned his hand in a remote canyon. "I started to feel like I was going to throw up," said Courtney Phelps, who was watching "127 Hours" at a recent Producers Guild of America screening in Hollywood and grew ill just as the amputation scene ended.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 26, 2010 | By Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times
Another employee has lost part of a finger at Bimbo Bakeries, a company with plants statewide whose record of workplace accidents was highlighted by The Times last year as an example of inaction by California health and safety officials. In addition, the company failed to disclose the 2007 amputation of a different worker's finger, officials at the Division of Occupational Health and Safety said last week. That brings the company's total number of amputations to nine since 2003, when a worker lost most of her arm in a bread machine.
NATIONAL
June 17, 2010 | By Christine Dempsey
Jonathan Metz had given up. He had tried pulling his left arm out of his basement boiler, where it had become lodged while he was cleaning. He had tried screaming for help. When the arm became infected, after about 18 hours, he even tried cutting it off. Nothing worked. And he realized he might die there on the blood-soaked basement floor. Metz, 31, talked in public about his ordeal for the first time this week at the hospital where he underwent surgery. His voice hoarse and his face bathed in light from TV camera crews, he spoke matter-of-factly about his experience.
HEALTH
May 31, 2010 | Marc Siegel, The Unreal World
"House, M.D.", season finale Fox, Monday, May 17, 8 p.m. Episode: "Help Me" The premise: A crane collapses onto a building in Trenton, N.J. Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) and Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) arrive with a team of doctors to help the fire department and emergency rescue workers treat the wounded. House finds Hanna, 25, trapped under the collapsed concrete. Her leg is stuck and the team is unable to free it. Cuddy suggests immediate amputation to treat the "compartment syndrome" she believes has developed from the injury, before it kills Hanna's tissue and causes an increase in potassium levels, possibly leading to cardiac arrest.