Accidental Bolt Gun Injury to Femur - A Case Report

Abstract

Introduction:Bolt gun or slaughterer’s guns are used in meat industry for “humane killing” of animals. Injuries caused by bolt gun are rare, reported exclusively from central European countries. We report a case of 28 year old male, who accidentally shot himself with a bolt gun to his right thigh.Case Report:A 28 years old male presented to our Accident and Emergency department after accidental injury to his right thigh with bolt gun. He had an entry wound measuring 2 cm in length and 1 cm in breadth over anterior aspect of lower one third of thigh at lower and sustained Grade II compound fracture of right femur shaft at distal one third. The wound was treated with multiple debridements, negative pressure wound therapy and intravenous antibiotics based on culture and sensitivity.Conclusion:Bolt gun or slaughterer’s guns are weapons used in meat industry for slaughtering animals. Wounds inflicted by bolt guns have specific morphological feature, distinctive from wounds made by other kinds of hand firearms. Most of the time wound will be infected at presentation. Lesions caused by these weapons are likely to have a more serious character than is to be expected from the size of the entrance wound. The mainstay of treatment is liberal wound exploration, multiple debridement’s and intra venous antibiotics based on culture reports to treat infection and prevent morbidity.

The punched-out tissue complex (skin-bone ”imprimatum“) in shots from captive-bolt guns: does it act as a secondary projectile?

“…Most of them (about 85%) are suicides committed by males experienced in slaughtering procedures [3,22,29,32,33,38,45,60]. Besides, a remarkable number of homicides [2, 7, 13, 20-22, 24, 27, 29, 32, 38, 40, 46, 48, 51, 53, 55, 61] and several accidents (survived or with fatal outcome) [22,26,38,41,54,56,62] have been published.…”