A woman in her 80s presented to the emergency department with a 16-inch flathead screwdriver protruding from the right side of her neck into her thorax.
About 4 inches of the screwdriver shaft was visible in the right lower neck, but there was no "pulsatile bleeding" on arrival, reported Lynn Choi, MD, of Albany Medical Center in New York, and co-authors in BMJ Case Reports.
"The aorta is the biggest artery in your body" and, if nicked, "that blood will come out with high pressure, and patients can bleed out fairly quickly," co-author Malena Allbright, a medical student at Albany Medical College, told MedPage Today.
About 80% of people with thoracic injuries like this don't survive, and most never reach the hospital, she noted.
The patient was using a screwdriver to pop fasteners off a pool cover and as she was doing this, "I guess she misstepped ... and when she tripped and fell, she landed on the screwdriver," Allbright said.
