This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Citing articles on Web of Science (3)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

STUART M. POTICHA, M.D.; JOHN L. BELL, M.D.; W. HARRISON MEHN, M.D.

AMA Arch Surg. 1962;85(5):852-861.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Introduction

Electrical injuries have interested physicians since 1879, when the first fatality caused by harnessed electrical enegry occurred.⁷ The increasing incidence, the unique nature of the lesions, and the variable and often severe sequelae, have provided an impetus for their continued study.

Generally, it is believed that the degree of tissue damage in an electric injury is directly proportional to the amount of current which passes through the individual, or, as stated in Ohm's law, Amperage=Voltage/Resistance. In the majority of injuries the voltage remains constant. Therefore, the resistance provided by the skin at the point of contact determines the amount of current and extent of the lesion. This resistance varies in each instance. Such factors as thickness of the skin, cleanliness of the area, and amount of moisture present may cause skin resistance to vary from 1,000 ohms to as much as 1 million ohms.¹⁸ Thus the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
CHICAGO

From the Department of Surgery, Northwestern University Medical School and Passavant Memorial Hospital.

Footnotes
Presented at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Central Surgical Association, Cincinnati, Feb. 21-24, 1962.

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?