What is Traumatic Asphyxia?

Traumatic Asphyxia is defined as "asphyxia produced by a sudden increase in venous pressure". While that definition is accurate, it does not provide a broad enough description to this occurrence of what it is or how it happens. To understand fully what traumatic asphyxia is, please read further to educate yourself and those around you.

Traumatic Asphyxia is characterized by the complete force required to cause severe and deadly damage by crushing the thorax. Typically traumatic asphyxia does not include deadly pressure to the throat but to the chest or upper abdominal area.

Your thoracic cavity is what holds your heart and lungs. Traumatic Asphyxia causes direct pressure on these organs, crushing them and resulting in death. The time it takes to die from traumatic asphyxia depends on whether or not the person who is being crushed is fighting back or not. If you are fighting back, your organs are working harder and are under more pressure and you will die quicker than if you were not fighting back at all.

The most common form of traumatic asphyxia is called Compressive Asphyxia. Compressive Asphyxia limits the expanding of your lungs by compressing the torso of an individual, which inhibits the ability to breathe.

Being pinned under a heavy object, most commonly causes traumatic asphyxia by compression. Being pinned in an automobile after an accident in which your chest is crushed or pinned is a direct example of traumatic asphyxia. Another example of traumatic asphyxia by compression is in which an individual has been pinned underneath the axles of a car while changing a tire. Snakes such as pythons and anacondas also use traumatic asphyxia to crush the thoracic cavity of their prey.

In tragic crowd mishaps, where several persons have been trampling, it is not the blunt trauma that causes the most deaths, but instead it is the traumatic asphyxia from being crushed or compressed within the throngs of people in the crowd.

Another common occurrence of traumatic asphyxia is found in various combat sports, where submission holds tire your opponent by cutting off his supply of oxygen, which is popular. Knees to the stomach or body scissors are some of the more popular submission style holds that can cause traumatic asphyxia.

Although the causes and forces of traumatic asphyxia are many, the results of this condition are nearly always the same and end in death. Educating yourself and those around you on the ways you can prevent yourself from being a victim of traumatic asphyxia are necessary to keep your thoracic cavity in tact and your organs functioning at their respective capacities.

Wikipedia/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asphyxia
Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers/ http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/traumatic+asphyxia