“The windshield and hood were damp.” Doctor explains why MMA fighter survived fall from 10th floor

MMA fighter Magomed Zainalov (5 wins, 9 losses) fell from the window of the 10th floor of a building in Rostov-on-Don and miraculously survived. According to preliminary information, the 24-year-old athlete lost his temper while trying to save a pet. After the fall, Zainalov was conscious and was urgently hospitalized in the city hospital. Doctor Valentin Belyaevsky, who previously worked in the Rostov trauma department and also collaborated with professional football players and MMA fighters in private practice, tells the gist of the incident.

—Why do some people survive falling from the tenth floor?

“In this case, the car definitely saved me.” From what I understand, the windshield and hood were damped, the circumstances were so fortunate that this factor saved my life. But the person is in intensive care, here you want to wait for the moment when everything will be perfectly fine for him.

– So it’s not a horror story, when a man fell from a great height, returned home himself and died two days later?

– Well, yes, for the first few minutes and hours the patient can be conscious, he can be active, he can walk and talk. And then the situation starts to deteriorate and everything ends badly. The greatest danger is that life-threatening conditions develop over time. Some kind of head trauma has been suffered, hemorrhage has occurred, the hematoma is growing… This happens over several hours or days, depression of consciousness occurs and even death is possible. And the same goes for injuries to the neck, internal organs or spine. Additionally, it can lead to organ failure throughout the chain, disease such as multiple organ failure may develop, and serious abdominal bleeding may occur. In general, all this can change over time, although doctors can operate and take measurements in time.

— If doctors examine the brain and at that time a person has a ruptured liver, will that be a mistake on the part of the doctors?

“There are protocols, it’s never random: “let’s feel here, and now here”. I myself have worked in traumatology, I know this subject well. It must be understood that there are resuscitation protocols and protocols for combined trauma. And here there will be a combined injury, when there is damage to the nervous system, bones and internal organs. This is no longer done only by a traumatologist, but by a surgeon who, in theory, can remove or suture an organ. A team of neurosurgeons can also work here and perform craniotomies. And a traumatologist who stabilizes some sort of unstable fracture, if, for example, we have multiple fractures of the pelvic bones, and it’s all moving and can continue to injure the patient.

—As a doctor, are you surprised that a person survives a fall from the 10th floor?

– It’s not surprising at all, it’s an accident. A person can die by tripping on a flat surface. He can die by breaking a light bulb, but people also survive in the most incredible circumstances.

— We know approximately the recovery time for typical football injuries. What is a fracture of the pelvic bones during a fall from height?

“If he only has a broken pelvic bone and nothing else, it’s not that much.” A year of recovery, and he will be able to return to sport in favorable circumstances. But, most likely, there will be a combined injury, there may be ruptures of internal organs, head trauma and spinal cord injury. Here from one year to infinity.

— What injuries to the internal organs make it impossible to return to sport? The ruptured spleen that we talk about so often?

— The spleen is often injured because it is filled with blood. The liver is injured due to its location. Here you need to examine the nature of the damage. If the spleen is ruptured and simply removed, it will not affect your sports career in any way. But removing a kidney is already a serious matter. You may remember Radic from Rostov who had his kidney removed after the collision. Immediately after the operation, he gave up his career. Liver damage? The entire liver will not be removed in any case, they make sutures and that’s it.

—Could it help somehow if he had a good muscular corset?

– No not at all. When we talk about falling from a height, it’s like a truck hitting you. It depends more on what you fell on and how you turned when you fell, where the bones are. If we were really fantasizing, the ability to regroup properly might help us, but it’s unlikely. Just luck.

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