An Inside Look: Awesome X-Ray Photos
What does a snapped fibia look like? How about a knife to the eye socket? X-rays allow us an impressive look at the odder, and sometimes more gruesome, parts of the human body from a perspective we can't get otherwise, allowing insight into bizarre accidents, broken bones, swallowed objects, and quite a bit more (for better or worse!).
Talk about getting bent out of shape! FMX biker “Mad” Mike Jones hit a tree stump while snowmobiling in Utica, New York with a friend and flew head first over the handlebars in January 2010. The freak accident caused a compound fracture in his leg, pushing his fibia (shin bone) up through his knee and leaving a previously placed rod from an old tibia injury seriously bent. He had surgery to repair the broken bone a day after the accident, but unfortunately had to cancel his upcoming IFMA motocross tour.
Source: ESPN.com
This 36 year-old businessman suffered a severe compound fracture years ago, leaving him with a painful deformity of his lower leg. Doctors had considerably difficulty in finding a solution to the problems arising from the injury, but eventually constructed this innovative metal brace in and around his shin. Prior to the brace, he had experienced pain when walking and when laying down at night. The brace corrected the deformity and removed the pain.
Source: International Deformity and Lengthening Institute
United States Army Sergeant Dan Powers was stabbed in the head by an insurgent while on his second deployment to Baghdad, Iraq in 2007. The attack left him with four inches of a knife blade lodged into his brain above his cheekbone, and just below his helmet. The knife also entered cavernous sinus, where a group of veins that supplies blood to the right side of the brain is located. Incredibly, Sgt. Powers was fully conscious and communicative after the attack, with no pain. The Army's best vascular neurosurgeon guided a team of U.S. military physicians via laptop to conduct the preliminary surgery, and Powers was flown to the U.S. to receive several more surgeries. He is now fully recovered with no lasting side effects.
Source: Air Force Times
Do you ever just get a craving for some tasty magnets? Apparently this three-year-old child did – he swallowed three small industrial magnets. His parents recognized a problem when he complained of abdominal pains, which occurred as a result of the magnets pinching his intestine. This is a very high-risk issue, given that magents can cause pressure necrosis and intestinal perforation. The child required immediate surgery to recover the magnets and repair his intestine.
Source: Children's Hospital Boston
Ever wonder where that toy went that you'd left sitting around? Well, now you know that your dog might be the culprit – this six-year-old Patterdale terrier named Spike swallowed a yellow rubber duckie whole. His owners assumed he had chewed it up and it passed through him, but 18 months later, in February 2010, an x-ray revealed the duck still uncomfortably situated inside Spike after his owners sought treatment for the dog's sluggish behavior and vomiting. After a $1,500 operation Spike is back to normal and his owners have a keepsake from the event – a little rubber duckie, minus its yellow paint.
Source: BBC News
While this image isn't an x-ray of a human, this shot of an electric chair highlights a more artistic approach to x-ray imaging. Nick Veasey, author of X-ray: See Through the World Around You , created this image along with many others as part of a project that sought to use advanced technology for the sake of art. The ominous coils exposed in this x-ray reveal the gruesome yet beautiful nature of this piece of technology. Veasey rightly points out, "The unseen can be seen, the internal elements and workings revealed. The inside becomes the outside."
Source: Daily Mail
This disturbing photo is an x-ray of 17 month-old Nicholas Holderman after his parents' car keys got lodged into his brain. While playing with his two brothers, Nicholas on the set of keys sending one key through his eyelid and eye socket, and penetrating into his brain. After a frantic phone call to 911 from his mother, he was immediately taken by medevac helicopter to a nearby hospital. Hospital staff waited four hours for an expert to arrive, who realized that the eye had been pushed flat, but after further examination, found that the eye had not ruptured. The doctors were able to remove the key without further damage and today Nicholas maintains perfect eyesight. In fact, an onlooker can't even spot which eye was hurt in the first place!
Source: msnbc.com
In 2005, Patrick Lawler went to his dentist complaining of a toothache. What the dentist found was enough to give anyone a toothache, and a whole lot more pain than that: a four-inch-long nail had pierced through the roof of Patrick's mouth, through his nasal cavity, and was embedded 1.5 inches into his brain, barely having missed his right eye. Six days prior, he was working at a construction site in Breckenridge, Colorado when his nail gun misfired, shooting a nail into a nearby piece of wood. Lawler didn't realize that a second nail had hit him. He underwent a four-hour surgery to remove the nail, and has made a full recovery.
Source: msnbc.com