Blunt facial trauma from a bungee jump.
A 28-year-old man was brought to the emergency department for severe facial swelling the morning after a bungee jumping accident. The patient had been making jumps nearly every weekend for the past 3 years without injury. This time, he had performed a nighttime jump from a railroad trestle over the gorge of a small river. The height of the bridge at the center of the gorge was about 200 ft, and the river was about 12 ft deep. When the patient jumped, he hit the water face first, plunging under the surface to his waist. The cause of the accident was thought to be a miscalculation of the bridge height.
Kmucha
S T
ST
Department of Surgery, Stanford University Medical Center, Stanford, CA, USA.