Suicide Ride
In the late 90s when these Black Talons were all the buzz amongst certain security personnel in South Africa, I also believed as you do that the barbs on a Black Talon constituted a serious sharps hazard during surgery. I went so far as to build radiological profiles of these expanded bullets so that medical staff could identify them as sharps hazards with a fair degree of accuracy even if there was only one X-ray view available.
But let us look at the big picture.
A surgeon operating on a gunshot victim is not compelled to seek or remove projectile components from that patient unless the continued presence of the projectile / fragments constitutes a significant risk to the patient. Some examples are plumbism, embolism and mechanical and ferromagnetic hazards. They don't go rummaging through the innards of a patient looking for these projectiles for no good reason. They may encounter the projectile during surgery or may go a little bit out of their way to get the projectile if they think it is nearby, but they aren't compelled to do so. Unless it is a hazard, they can leave it right there.
Granted, if he is operating on a gunshot victim and he carelessly rummages around the patient's insides and doesn't have the required gloves, he may get a sharps injury. Now I'll concede that such an injury is less likely if the projectile is all lead, or if it is an intact FMJ or if it is a JHP with a bonded core such as a Gold Dot. But what you have to realise is that any piece of damaged jacketing can be a sharps hazard. In fact in some cases (such as certain calibres of the Winchester Silvertip) you could argue that the danger is worse because the jacketing cannot be detected on the diagnostic X-ray imaging employed to image these patients.
Anyway the bottom line here is that it is prudent in all gunshot cases to be careful when operating, because of the risk of a sharps hazard from a projectile or its components, especially jacketing.
Unfortunately for forensic pathologists, they must get the projectile as it is evidence and the victim is now deceased. In this case he must go for it. You would think that he faces a huge risk from delving for a Black Talon... or so I thought.
In 2002 when I was in Johannesburg doing some research into gunshot wounds, I managed to get hold of one of the top pathologists attached to the Medical School of the Johannesburg Hospital and I asked him what his staff do when detecting these dangerous projectiles, especially this Black Talon. Imagine my surprise when he laughed and said his biggest threat isn't from the projectile, but in most cases is from the patient's own bone splinters. He said incidents of sharps injuries from pieces of bone were foremost in his mind, especially since they were not necessarily appreciated on X-ray. His staff actually wears a light kind of chain mail while handling these bodies, whether shot or not.
In summary on this issue, medical staff should (and in most cases I believe they do) act prudently and with caution when handling any patient who has a foreign body in situ which may be a sharps hazard. I don't think they need to be doing anything special when dealing with Black Talon vs any other projectile, but perhaps they need to review their handling of projectiles in general.
Plenty. Many of them go home the same day with a simple dressing and some antibiotics. I would attribute some of the tangential injuries with no more devastating damage than a skinned knee or other sports graze. In a four month period in 2002 at a trauma unit in Johannesburg there were 542 gunshot cases and of those 35% went home the same day.
In the 80s I was stupid enough to fire a welding rod through my own thumb, where it lodged and was ripped out by a crazy GP with not so much as a do-you-mind. That was a hole through a digit, and I've seen many gunshot victims who I would gladly trade that injury with (and yes, I am talking about guys who were perforated).
A gunshot wound isn't the ultimate evil/crisis/killer/debilitating nightmare. It CAN be, but it doesn't have to be. Spend some time in a trauma unit and you'll see that the many of these guys get away with being shot and are back at home the same day or the next day, telling their mates all about it.
In terms of the original Black Talons suffering from core-jacket separation, this has been documented. I've X-rayed and interviewed one guy who took a Black Talon through the thigh and he later brought me the projectile to examine. It wasn't totally intact, there were small pieces of lead left in his thigh, but negligible. That one was a textbook/manufacturer's spec expansion.
I also examined the radiographs and retrieved components in another case where a young woman took a Black Talon in the pelvis, and that one was a complete core-jacket separation. So it does indeed happen. That's one out of two for me, but perhaps some of my American colleagues have seen many more cases involving the Black Talon and can provide a comment on a larger sample.
In the late 90s when these Black Talons were all the buzz amongst certain security personnel in South Africa, I also believed as you do that the barbs on a Black Talon constituted a serious sharps hazard during surgery. I went so far as to build radiological profiles of these expanded bullets so that medical staff could identify them as sharps hazards with a fair degree of accuracy even if there was only one X-ray view available.
But let us look at the big picture.
A surgeon operating on a gunshot victim is not compelled to seek or remove projectile components from that patient unless the continued presence of the projectile / fragments constitutes a significant risk to the patient. Some examples are plumbism, embolism and mechanical and ferromagnetic hazards. They don't go rummaging through the innards of a patient looking for these projectiles for no good reason. They may encounter the projectile during surgery or may go a little bit out of their way to get the projectile if they think it is nearby, but they aren't compelled to do so. Unless it is a hazard, they can leave it right there.
Granted, if he is operating on a gunshot victim and he carelessly rummages around the patient's insides and doesn't have the required gloves, he may get a sharps injury. Now I'll concede that such an injury is less likely if the projectile is all lead, or if it is an intact FMJ or if it is a JHP with a bonded core such as a Gold Dot. But what you have to realise is that any piece of damaged jacketing can be a sharps hazard. In fact in some cases (such as certain calibres of the Winchester Silvertip) you could argue that the danger is worse because the jacketing cannot be detected on the diagnostic X-ray imaging employed to image these patients.
Anyway the bottom line here is that it is prudent in all gunshot cases to be careful when operating, because of the risk of a sharps hazard from a projectile or its components, especially jacketing.
Unfortunately for forensic pathologists, they must get the projectile as it is evidence and the victim is now deceased. In this case he must go for it. You would think that he faces a huge risk from delving for a Black Talon... or so I thought.
In 2002 when I was in Johannesburg doing some research into gunshot wounds, I managed to get hold of one of the top pathologists attached to the Medical School of the Johannesburg Hospital and I asked him what his staff do when detecting these dangerous projectiles, especially this Black Talon. Imagine my surprise when he laughed and said his biggest threat isn't from the projectile, but in most cases is from the patient's own bone splinters. He said incidents of sharps injuries from pieces of bone were foremost in his mind, especially since they were not necessarily appreciated on X-ray. His staff actually wears a light kind of chain mail while handling these bodies, whether shot or not.
In summary on this issue, medical staff should (and in most cases I believe they do) act prudently and with caution when handling any patient who has a foreign body in situ which may be a sharps hazard. I don't think they need to be doing anything special when dealing with Black Talon vs any other projectile, but perhaps they need to review their handling of projectiles in general.
Plenty. Many of them go home the same day with a simple dressing and some antibiotics. I would attribute some of the tangential injuries with no more devastating damage than a skinned knee or other sports graze. In a four month period in 2002 at a trauma unit in Johannesburg there were 542 gunshot cases and of those 35% went home the same day.
In the 80s I was stupid enough to fire a welding rod through my own thumb, where it lodged and was ripped out by a crazy GP with not so much as a do-you-mind. That was a hole through a digit, and I've seen many gunshot victims who I would gladly trade that injury with (and yes, I am talking about guys who were perforated).
A gunshot wound isn't the ultimate evil/crisis/killer/debilitating nightmare. It CAN be, but it doesn't have to be. Spend some time in a trauma unit and you'll see that the many of these guys get away with being shot and are back at home the same day or the next day, telling their mates all about it.
In terms of the original Black Talons suffering from core-jacket separation, this has been documented. I've X-rayed and interviewed one guy who took a Black Talon through the thigh and he later brought me the projectile to examine. It wasn't totally intact, there were small pieces of lead left in his thigh, but negligible. That one was a textbook/manufacturer's spec expansion.
I also examined the radiographs and retrieved components in another case where a young woman took a Black Talon in the pelvis, and that one was a complete core-jacket separation. So it does indeed happen. That's one out of two for me, but perhaps some of my American colleagues have seen many more cases involving the Black Talon and can provide a comment on a larger sample.