Traumatic cardiac arrest is a condition in which the heart has ceased to beat due to blunt or penetrating trauma, such as a stab wound to the thoracic area. It is a medical emergency which will always result in death without prompt advanced medical care. Even with prompt medical intervention, survival without neurological complications is rare. There are no definitive protocols in place in how to manage traumatic cardiac arrest, but certain people benefit from the use of a thoracotomy.
Famous quotes containing the words traumatic and/or arrest:
“There’s a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they’ll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life. They’re aristocrats.”
—Diane Arbus (1923–1971)
“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)