Yes, breaking your femur if it nicks an artery can cause blood loss and death in minutes. It happens. Is it common? No. Internal bleeding is serious and can kill you fast. However, it is not that common and not happening all the time like she claims.
My DH has been a firefighter/EMT for 11 years on a full time fire department(running 6000 calls a year). Wanna know how many times he's seen it(death in minutes from femur fractures)? Zero
I've been a firefighter/EMT for 9 years on a part time fire department (running 1000 calls a year). Wanna know how many times I've seen it? Zero
Wanna know how many accidents we've been on total in our careers together? Probably close to 300.
Wanna know how many femur fractures we have seen in those accidents? Four. Neither was fatal. All were adults with major intrusion into the passenger compartment
Wanna know how many femur breaks we've seen from rear facing? Zero
Wanna know how many femur breaks we've seen from forward facing(children)? Zero
Wanna know how many rear facing kids I've seen die? one. And it was non survivable (and it was a newborn)
Wanna know how many forward facing kids I've seen die from neck/head/abdominal injuries? Four. Four too many.
Wanna know how many forward facing kids I've seen die from leg injuries? Zero
My point is, if anything, femur's will break forward facing from the legs flying every which way. However, they mainly don't. Femur's most likely will not break rear facing unless the force is so strong to drill the kid into the seat his legs are touching. IN that case, most accidents will not be survivable anyways.
So I'm not sure where she is an EMT that there is a magical femur breaking bubble in her service area, but it's not happening. I've worked in a level 2 trauma center as a nurse for years as well, and I've seen 2 or 3 femur fractures on a kid from an accident, and they didn't die. Kids are SO flexible, it would have to most likely be severe blunt force trauma to cause it. So for her to see "all these cases" leads me to believe she's lying
I don't doubt it could happen in some rare cases. But it is NOT common and overall is not happening frequently. It's the exception, not the rule. And if anything, it would be happening FFing, NOT RFing.
Too bad she couldn't have been on the call with me with the two year old with internal decapitation to really know what happens in fatal crashes :twocents:
The only cases of death within minutes from bleeding out I've seen on accidents are from ruptured and torn aortas. In serious accidents the force literally tears the aorta and that patient bleeds out into their abdominal cavity and are usually dead in 30 seconds-5 minutes. Other cases involved a belt (seatbelt syndrome) hitting a blood rich organ and rupturing it causing bleeding out and death within 1-10 minutes. From femurs though? Unless the artery is nicked which honestly doesn't happen often, the patient will not die in minutes. They *can*, but overall, they don't. I've been on more femur fracture calls than I can remember(accidents/falls etc) , and not one has died from it. Aorta and organs? Yes. Plenty. Femur? None.
Now put a 3 year old RFing in a bucket not properly restrained with a loose harness in an expired seat, and yeah, I'm sure a leg injury could happen. But a properly restrained young infant(which is what she most likely saw as it was 3 years ago and I highly doubt it was a 2-3 year old she saw) whose legs don't even extend past the car seat because they are too small still? i can't see that being a common occurance