Don’t forget to prevent crashes in the fall harvest – a warning to fellow farmers

Golden autumn, it is the farmers busy harvest season, fruitful results make people happy, but if you do not pay attention to safety, then it will inevitably destroy your good mood of this pleasant, and will even bring you a lot of grief and pain results. I am an orthopedic surgeon, every year to receive and treat farmers in neighboring counties, due to the occurrence of a crash and cervical spine injuries caused by more than a dozen or so patients. The minor ones suffer fractures, while the more serious ones incur paraplegia. Their fall situation and the way so similar, year after year, can not help but cause farmers to pay close attention to friends. Cervical spine is a special part of the human body, it consists of 7 fast irregularly shaped vertebrae in an orderly manner, its vertebral body is small, narrow in front of the back of the wide wedge, and has a convex curvature, nearly horizontal arrangement, surrounded by ligamentous protection is extremely weak. In addition to the 1st and 2nd cervical intervertebral, there are movable elastic pads between the two vertebrae, called intervertebral discs, and there is a foramen surrounded by bone at the back of each cone, and when the vertebrae are aligned, a spinal canal is formed, and the most important spinal cord passes through the spinal canal, which is a relay station for nerve information. Because of its special anatomical and functional characteristics, the role they play is very important, it is the link between the brain “headquarters” and the whole body of each “outpost” of the main traffic and hub, is the uploading of the body and the brain must be connected to the pathway, but also the weakest and most vulnerable parts of the human being. It is also the weakest and most vulnerable part of the human body. Once harmed, it will cause serious consequences. Since our country in the rural areas after the implementation of the family contract responsibility system, from the centralized production into each family’s decentralized farming, the scale of production has become smaller, therefore, some of the large means of transport is not practical, and small means of transport is very prevalent, such as common in the countryside of a single horse-drawn horse-drawn carts, known as the “Dazhai car” is more. When farmers fall harvest of beanstalks and cornstalks need to be transported from the ground to home, often the car loaded more, higher, and more loose. As a result of the rush back and forth, but also lazy cable tie, trying to use the weight of the human body on the roof of the car pressure fixed, people on the roof of the car in a “big” shape open limbs, lying prone on the roof of the car, the loss of the opportunity to observe the route and the road surface, there is no psychological preparedness for defense. Rural areas are mostly dirt roads, uneven surfaces, deep ruts, driving is obviously very unstable, the car body swaying from side to side, and the roof of the car swing amplitude is even greater, once the center of gravity is lost, people will fall from the roof of the car. Family labor is often characterized by the sunset, busy home to catch the road, the man in front of the horse, the woman worked hard all day, by the “preferential treatment” and get on the car to take on this important task, therefore, the victim is often the wife. The first to hit the ground is usually the head, due to the impact of the body’s force, making the neck by the role of the top of the fold, if the top of the head to the ground is the occurrence of flexion injury, cervical vertebrae can be fractured or dislocated in front of the spinal cord is also subjected to compression and injury. If the forehead and face hit the ground, there will be over-extension injury, and the posterior dislocation of the cervical vertebrae or the spinal cord will be overly stretched and damaged. No matter which type of injury is mentioned above, paralysis of limbs and paraplegia will occur, and the respiration of the serious ones will be inhibited, which is dangerous to the life, or even to the death of the patient on the spot. Even if some patients are sent to the hospital, they will die within a week due to the progression of the injury. For those patients who have the chance to survive, paraplegia fails to recover, bringing serious burden and pain to the family, society and themselves, and some patients who suffer from serious complications due to poor financial burden and poor care will also die in the middle of the year or in the last half a year. Such serious injuries and cruel reality should remind every farmer friend to listen to the advice of orthopaedic surgeons and pay attention to safety while you are busy with the fall harvest and not to repeat the dangerous practices mentioned above, so as to avoid the tragedy that happens year after year from repeating itself in other families.