Lightning injuries
A major source of injury and death from the environment, lightning is one of the top three causes of death from environmental origins. Lightning-related injuries are estimated to account for 3000 admissions to burn units each year in the US. Lightning is neither a direct current nor an alternating current. It is a unidirectional, massive, current impulse with several return strokes back to the cloud. Once connection from the cloud is made, a tremendously large current impulsively flows for an incredibly short time. The most important difference between lightning and high-voltage electrical injuries is the duration of exposure to the current. Lightning has only brief contact with the skin. There is not enough time to allow skin burns. Internal burns and renal failure play a small part in the injury pattern from lightning. Respiratory and cardiac arrest, vascular spasm, and neurologic damage are potential serious consequences of lightning injuries.
Read Also:
- Lights, flashing
A sensation that is created when the clear, jelly-like substance that fills the middle of the eye (vitreous humor) shrinks and tugs on the retina. These flashes of light can appear off and on for several weeks or months. As a person ages, flashes are likely to occur increasingly often. Flashes usually do not reflect […]
- Lilliputian hallucination
An hallucination in which things, people, or animals seem smaller than they would be in real life. Lilliputian refers to the “little people” who lived (fictionally) on the island of Lilliput in Jonathan Swift’s 1726 masterpiece Gulliver’s Travels. The term “Lilliputian hallucination” was coined by John Todd, an English psychiatrist (1914-1987) who also called it […]
- Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy
Muscular dystrophy, limb-girdle.
- Liminal
In neurolgy, at the threshold of perception to a sensory stimulus. In other words, just barely perceptible to the senses. “Liminal” comes from the Latin noun “limen” meaning “threshold.” It makes sense, then, that “liminal” applies to the idea of a sensory threshold. “Subliminal” is below that threshold at which an effect is produced.
- Lindane
An organochlorine pesticide and nerve poison. Also a suspected carcinogen (cancer-causing agent). Although many countries have banned lindane, it is still used in the US for treating head lice and scabies. Also known as gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2003 announced stronger warnings and a medication guide to be distributed […]