Cheyenne
Ms. Smarty Pantsless
- Joined
- Apr 18, 2000
- Posts
- 59,553
I saw this and remembered how many body piercings we had in members of the board.
BY NORMA WAGNER - THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
The state's emergency rooms are seeing more injuries and
complications resulting from an increasingly popular fashion
trend: body piercing.
Physicians are discovering, and often have to remove, stainless steel rings and studs inserted into areas of the body they never would have imagined. The resulting delays in care and treatment in some instances are life-threatening.
In a teen-age girl's case at LDS Hospital, physicians found themselves unable to insert a breathing tube down her throat because her tongue stud blocked the instrument.
"One doctor got to the point where he said if you have to rip her tongue, just do it," said Shari Welch, an emergency-room doctor who has witnessed three serious complications -- including one death -- during the past 18 months due to the popular jewelry.
"In a situation like this, seconds count." The girl had overdosed on the date-rape drug GHB and was on a respirator for 13 hours after physicians were finally able to maneuver the tube past the stud.
University Hospital also has run into problems with the jewelry numerous times in the past year. Most recently, a young man with a severe head injury from a motorcycle accident also had a tongue stud blocking an intubation tube.
"None of us knew how to get it out," said Deborah Melle,
a registered nurse. "Finally somebody did, but it seemed like it took forever because he wasn't breathing and it definitely delayed care. In the past year, it's gotten increasingly worse."
The rings also throw off sophisticated diagnostic machines, like CT Scans and MRIs, which show detailed images of the brain in head-injury patients.
They can lead to other complications as well, like the key-ring sized piece of jewelry pierced into the genitalia of a 19-year-old college student who suffered pelvic fractures after being run over by a car. The ring shredded his urethra, the canal through which urine and semen are discharged. Long after his pelvic injuries had healed, he had to return to the LDS Hospital emergency room to have his kidneys drained because he could not urinate on his own.
"He's probably going to have problems the rest of his life," Welch said, "possibly even fertility problems."
Melle had a similar problem trying to insert a urinary-tract catheter into a patient who had a ring pierced through the tip of his penis. "It hurt just to look at it," she said, "not to mention being difficult to remove."
"It's a pure fashion decision that has potentially life-threatening complications and profound health issues," said Welch, a 15-year emergency room veteran who now lectures on the subject.
Those experienced in the piercing industry say infections do happen, usually when patrons don't follow cleansing recommendations, but that the severe cases area emergency rooms are seeing are rare.
"They work in an emergency room. They always see complications. That's all they ever see," said Benjamin Salomon, a body piercer at ASI Tattoo in Sugar House.
Staff at the state's busiest emergency room at Pioneer Valley Hospital in West Valley City have been dealing with the problem for nearly a decade and have become adept at removing the jewelry -- which comes in dozens of different shapes and sizes and has sundry ways to disattach.
"If the jewelry gets in the way, we just take it out," said hospital spokeswoman Carol Lindsay. "And if we can't get it out,we've actually cut it out with wire cutters."
But she also pointed out that in critical trauma cases, like head injuries, staff usually intubates the patient, stabilizes them, then flies them by emergency helicopter to either LDS or University.
Staff at those emergency rooms say they now know to look
for the jewelry on patients, but they admit they could use some training in how to remove the studs and rings.
"We've always been careful about taking off the usual jewelry people wear, like watches and earrings, but with the advent of all these new ways to pierce your body and the new places on the body they're piercing, if people can't tell us where they have this jewelry because they are unconscious, we spend a great deal of time looking over their entire bodies -- something we didn't used to do but we certainly do now," said Melle, of University Hospital.
One fatality at LDS Hospital earlier this year occurred after an 18-year-old female developed adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) a week after getting her tongue pierced. ARDS is a type of lung failure that can result from a severe infection throughout the body. "If you survive, you're lucky," Welch said.
The young woman arrived in the E.R. with a high fever. Her blood pressure and oxygen levels were "deathly low," said Welch.
Within a day, the teen-ager was dead.
Blood cultures revealed the culprit: a bacterial infection known as Group A strep.
"The physicians involved in her case concluded that because the piercing was followed by pain and fever, it was the most compelling evidence for what caused the strep infection," Welch said.
Despite at least one attempt, the practice of body piercing has yet to be regulated by the state. As Kim Morris, spokesman for the Department of Occupational and Professional Licensing (DOPL), put it: "We regulate cosmetologists and barbers, but we don't regulate body piercers." County health departments regulate and inspect tattoo parlors, but only that side of their business.
A bill was proposed during the last legislative session to give DOPL authority over body piercers, "but it just floated around the Capitol. It didn't get anywhere," Morris said.
The only legal rule in Utah for someone wanting to get their body pierced is having to prove they're age 18 or older. The only studio in Utah that strictly limits its business to body piercing is KOI Piercing Studio at 1301 S. 900 East. Piercer John Pratt was trained in the practice five years ago at a body-piercing school in California. He said the practice is safe if the piercer knows what to do, like sterilizing equipment and avoiding certain areas of the body -- like the veins in the tongue and the chord of skin that attaches it to the bottom of the mouth. Aftercare also is critical, he continued, such as cleaning the area daily until it heals, treating an infection immediately and seeing a physician if it doesn't clear up.
"Hippie," a 20-year-old Bountiful native, has had just about every part of his body pierced. He has suffered infections in nearly all of them -- his tongue, eyebrows, left nipple and nasal septum.
"It just starts getting all filled up with pus. I never healed right like everybody else," he said outside Crossroads Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City.
Despite his previous infections, "Hippie" said he'll likely try piercing again.
"I liked it, the girls liked it," he said. "It's dope as
hell."
BY NORMA WAGNER - THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
The state's emergency rooms are seeing more injuries and
complications resulting from an increasingly popular fashion
trend: body piercing.
Physicians are discovering, and often have to remove, stainless steel rings and studs inserted into areas of the body they never would have imagined. The resulting delays in care and treatment in some instances are life-threatening.
In a teen-age girl's case at LDS Hospital, physicians found themselves unable to insert a breathing tube down her throat because her tongue stud blocked the instrument.
"One doctor got to the point where he said if you have to rip her tongue, just do it," said Shari Welch, an emergency-room doctor who has witnessed three serious complications -- including one death -- during the past 18 months due to the popular jewelry.
"In a situation like this, seconds count." The girl had overdosed on the date-rape drug GHB and was on a respirator for 13 hours after physicians were finally able to maneuver the tube past the stud.
University Hospital also has run into problems with the jewelry numerous times in the past year. Most recently, a young man with a severe head injury from a motorcycle accident also had a tongue stud blocking an intubation tube.
"None of us knew how to get it out," said Deborah Melle,
a registered nurse. "Finally somebody did, but it seemed like it took forever because he wasn't breathing and it definitely delayed care. In the past year, it's gotten increasingly worse."
The rings also throw off sophisticated diagnostic machines, like CT Scans and MRIs, which show detailed images of the brain in head-injury patients.
They can lead to other complications as well, like the key-ring sized piece of jewelry pierced into the genitalia of a 19-year-old college student who suffered pelvic fractures after being run over by a car. The ring shredded his urethra, the canal through which urine and semen are discharged. Long after his pelvic injuries had healed, he had to return to the LDS Hospital emergency room to have his kidneys drained because he could not urinate on his own.
"He's probably going to have problems the rest of his life," Welch said, "possibly even fertility problems."
Melle had a similar problem trying to insert a urinary-tract catheter into a patient who had a ring pierced through the tip of his penis. "It hurt just to look at it," she said, "not to mention being difficult to remove."
"It's a pure fashion decision that has potentially life-threatening complications and profound health issues," said Welch, a 15-year emergency room veteran who now lectures on the subject.
Those experienced in the piercing industry say infections do happen, usually when patrons don't follow cleansing recommendations, but that the severe cases area emergency rooms are seeing are rare.
"They work in an emergency room. They always see complications. That's all they ever see," said Benjamin Salomon, a body piercer at ASI Tattoo in Sugar House.
Staff at the state's busiest emergency room at Pioneer Valley Hospital in West Valley City have been dealing with the problem for nearly a decade and have become adept at removing the jewelry -- which comes in dozens of different shapes and sizes and has sundry ways to disattach.
"If the jewelry gets in the way, we just take it out," said hospital spokeswoman Carol Lindsay. "And if we can't get it out,we've actually cut it out with wire cutters."
But she also pointed out that in critical trauma cases, like head injuries, staff usually intubates the patient, stabilizes them, then flies them by emergency helicopter to either LDS or University.
Staff at those emergency rooms say they now know to look
for the jewelry on patients, but they admit they could use some training in how to remove the studs and rings.
"We've always been careful about taking off the usual jewelry people wear, like watches and earrings, but with the advent of all these new ways to pierce your body and the new places on the body they're piercing, if people can't tell us where they have this jewelry because they are unconscious, we spend a great deal of time looking over their entire bodies -- something we didn't used to do but we certainly do now," said Melle, of University Hospital.
One fatality at LDS Hospital earlier this year occurred after an 18-year-old female developed adult respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) a week after getting her tongue pierced. ARDS is a type of lung failure that can result from a severe infection throughout the body. "If you survive, you're lucky," Welch said.
The young woman arrived in the E.R. with a high fever. Her blood pressure and oxygen levels were "deathly low," said Welch.
Within a day, the teen-ager was dead.
Blood cultures revealed the culprit: a bacterial infection known as Group A strep.
"The physicians involved in her case concluded that because the piercing was followed by pain and fever, it was the most compelling evidence for what caused the strep infection," Welch said.
Despite at least one attempt, the practice of body piercing has yet to be regulated by the state. As Kim Morris, spokesman for the Department of Occupational and Professional Licensing (DOPL), put it: "We regulate cosmetologists and barbers, but we don't regulate body piercers." County health departments regulate and inspect tattoo parlors, but only that side of their business.
A bill was proposed during the last legislative session to give DOPL authority over body piercers, "but it just floated around the Capitol. It didn't get anywhere," Morris said.
The only legal rule in Utah for someone wanting to get their body pierced is having to prove they're age 18 or older. The only studio in Utah that strictly limits its business to body piercing is KOI Piercing Studio at 1301 S. 900 East. Piercer John Pratt was trained in the practice five years ago at a body-piercing school in California. He said the practice is safe if the piercer knows what to do, like sterilizing equipment and avoiding certain areas of the body -- like the veins in the tongue and the chord of skin that attaches it to the bottom of the mouth. Aftercare also is critical, he continued, such as cleaning the area daily until it heals, treating an infection immediately and seeing a physician if it doesn't clear up.
"Hippie," a 20-year-old Bountiful native, has had just about every part of his body pierced. He has suffered infections in nearly all of them -- his tongue, eyebrows, left nipple and nasal septum.
"It just starts getting all filled up with pus. I never healed right like everybody else," he said outside Crossroads Plaza in downtown Salt Lake City.
Despite his previous infections, "Hippie" said he'll likely try piercing again.
"I liked it, the girls liked it," he said. "It's dope as
hell."
