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Harness Suspension Trauma

Here is an article relating to suspension trauma caused when a person is suspended via a body harness for extended periods of time. This might be very timely given that it's big game hunting season in many parts of the country.

Briefly - a person suspended in the air with legs free and dangling will die due to reduced blood flow in as little as 15 minutes unless rescued or able to self-extricate from the dangling position.

Very sobering.

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Harness Suspension Trauma.pdf, 39 KB

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Permalink Reply by T.J. on November 18, 2008 at 7:40am

well its a 50/50 chance die in a fire or die hanging around, what do you do?

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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on November 18, 2008 at 7:25pm

I presented this article to our county rope team leader, and he did some additional research to prove to himself that it wasn't an urban legend. He also talked to someone knowledgeable in the general subject. It is indeed true.

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Permalink Reply by Kimberly A Bownas on November 21, 2008 at 10:49pm

great info to have. thanks Joe. I can understand how that can happen after an extended amount of time hanging there in midair.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Stoltz on November 26, 2011 at 9:40pm

Just going through some old posts and for the rural EMS folks out there, this may be of interest.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on November 26, 2011 at 10:35pm

Great post to bump anyway. We need to do this collectively to help minimize the nonsensical posts that make folks question their involvement here on the FFN. Without folks like us doing this the U is missing from the FFN. With the practice of bumping good archived posts, the U is put back into the FFN making it FFUN...