(video game characters grunting)
(body slamming into ground)
(metal pieces rattling)
- Oh!!!
What?!
(beep)
Snapped, crushed, dislocated and more.
Today, we're reacting to the gnarly medical injuries
and x-ray moves from
- [Video Game Announcer] Mortal Kombat!
- Will these gameplay scenes and moves
be medically accurate?
Let's dive right in.
(beep)
(fighting noises)
(grunting)
(metal slicing into metal)
Oh!
Very rarely is something stuck in the skull.
Obviously, if you're hitting in the temple area,
(scribbling noises)
it's a little bit thinner bone,
but on the top and the back,
(scribbling noises)
it's pretty thick.
- It's pretty thick.
- And then you're actually seeing the anatomy,
which is actually really good.
You can see how deep set the eye socket is.
The nose actually has a bone at the top.
And you see the teeth,
the mandible.
This is fantastic.
Really cool.
(grunting) (body slamming noises)
(metal pieces rattling) Yep. And then we get the ribs.
Oh!
Exposure of the spine in the back.
You actually see these two wings.
These are the scapula.
The scapula is attached to your arm.
You have your humerus that comes up,
and the clavicle comes on top.
When somebody actually fractures the scapula,
we have a high suspicion
of a lot of other injuries that occur
because the amount of force that it takes
to actually break that bone.
(grunting)
(slamming and crunching noises)
Oh!
Holy cow!
So the ribs just explode.
They don't happen like that.
We see rib fractures all the time.
When you actually have a rib fracture,
it kills,
it hurts so bad.
The same pain is seen
when you actually don't have a rib fracture.
So, you have a dislocated rib,
or a bruised rib,
or a pulled muscle in between,
you can't just, like, splint it
and prevent it from moving.
You have to breathe.
So it has to expand.
So no matter what,
you're causing pain every time you take a deep breath.
(fighting noises) (grunting)
(body slamming) (metal pieces rattling)
Oh!
What?!
So, typically,
if someone's gonna be smacked to the ground like that,
the ribs are probably going to break
in, potentially, one of two places.
Either on the side anterior
or in the back.
They're kind of like a "C" shape.
Almost like a wishbone.
They can snap pretty easy at any point.
(body slamming) (metal pieces rattling)
Oh!
Man!
I don't understand how she's getting back up.
The rib's fractured on the backside,
and the vertebral column just pop.
Hmm. Okay.
- Hmm. Hmm.
- The anatomy is really good.
You're seeing the spinous processes.
You're seeing the transverse processes.
You're seeing a lot of different structures
of the vertebrae itself,
which is pretty impressive.
(fighting noises) (grunting)
(breaking and snapping noises) (grunting)
Oh!
I fractured my own back.
I know what that feels like.
Got a transverse process fracture.
Didn't even know it was fractured,
felt like a pulled muscle.
I had to wear a corset
that had two metal rods in the back
to keep my body structured.
You're really worried about injury to the spinal cord,
and anything below that area.
You may have paralyzation.
You might get tingling.
You might get pain.
It all depends on where on the spinal cord
it's irritating you.
(punching noise)
(metal rattling) (grunting)
Oh!
Man!
Skull on skull.
Fracture to the posterior aspect.
We call that the occiput.
Sometimes you can have a skull fracture,
a little bit of bleeding around the brain.
and, you know, it's treatable.
Actually, because the skull is fractured and open,
it allows the brain to swell a little bit,
and so there's not a lot of pressure pushing on.
But, you also increase the risk of infection.
Obviously, you need to be admitted to the hospital,
And it's gonna be a long stay.
(body slamming into ground) (crunching noises)
Oh!
Somebody comes in with a nice cervical fracture like that,
we're gonna put a C collar,
a rigid, hard, C collar on.
Everybody hates them.
If it's really bad,
you get something called a halo,
where it's actually a device that's screwed into your skull
typically five, four points.
So literally it's attached to protect your spine.
(punching noises) (grunting)
(metal grinding noises)
Oh!
Blade right through the face.
We see a lot of people who get injuries
to the maxillary sinus.
And yes, it could go all the way through
on the opposite side,
you (indistinct) pieces of the brain back there.
We do see people who get puncture wounds,
where the blade's already out,
or whatever it is there that caused the injury.
You have to be careful of, like, sneezing, blowing your nose
because you can actually blow air into the tissue,
and it hurts like hell.
(metal slicing noises) (grunting)
(crunching noises)
Wow!
Intro-abdominal, all the way through the spine.
Outside of the bones,
we think about the aorta.
We think about the interior vena cava.
These are your two main blood vessels.
If you lacerate one of those,
you potentially just get a bleed out into the abdomen,
and you could potentially die.
(gong sound)
(crunching sounds) (metal slicing sound)
(grunting)
(crunching sounds) Whoa!
(grunting)
You see how the nose potentially goes right in the face,
the whole structure here?
That's actually called a Le Fort fracture.
There's a couple different levels of Le Fort fractures,
depending on where they're fractured,
and how much connectivity there is, or lack of.
You're gonna need to fix that with probably some plates
to be able to get the structure back intact.
(fighting noises)
(crunching noises) (grunting)
Oh!
Wow!
I've seen a lot of jaw fractures.
The jaw is called the mandible.
Usually what happens is if it fractures in one area,
it fractures in another area.
Treatment for that is having your jaw wired shut.
Almost like having braces on,
but you get a really cool set of pliers
in case you feel like you're nauseous,
you wanna vomit,
So you can actually pop the wires off.
Not fun.
Not a cool injury.
- It's not cool.
- Typically wired shut for six to eight weeks.
(metal rattling and crunching) Oh!
Oh!
A high cervical fracture.
Those are like super dangerous, super bad.
We're seeing the head just snap to the side.
(snapping noise)
You have your C1, C2, C3.
Once you start getting fractures at that area,
the mortality is pretty high.
We actually think about it as almost like a rhyme,
C4 and C5 keeps your diaphragm alive.
So if you actually knock that out,
then you're actually not going be able to breathe.
So you actually have to be on, basically, a ventilator.
(metal rattling and crunching) (grunting)
Rip through the solar plexus.
That area is the epigastric area.
I don't know what organ he's pulling out.
Could it be the heart that he grabbed and ripped out?
Maybe.
Could be the spleen,
could be the stomach,
could be the liver.
It could be the pancreas.
These are all kind of organs in that area.
(grunting) What?!
(metal slashing) What?
What?
The bones of the eye socket are actually pretty fragile,
especially in the back,
and your brain's on the opposite side.
So if there's enough force,
and something sharp enough through the eye,
it could go straight back into the brain.
Typically there'll be some blood,
just depends on the major vessels that are hit or not.
I don't know if any of you have ever seen
the Bodies Exhibit.
They show an exhibition where it's all blood vessels,
and you see a high concentration
over, like, your major organs, your brain, the heart.
Super cool.
And you know, even just Google it online,
it's very impressive.
(metal slashing)
(metal crunching)
(grunting)
You can actually fracture somebody's face
by kicking them pretty hard in the heel.
The heel is a very dense bone.
It's actually called your calcaneus.
We see a lot of back fractures
that are occurring from falls from great heights.
You know, anytime we see anybody fall
from three times their own height,
it is a major trauma.
(punching) (grunting)
(metal crunching and rattling) Oh!
Super cool to see the x-ray
of somebody getting hit in the ribs.
The ribs there are basically to protect your spleen,
to protect your liver,
obviously the vital organs of your chest,
your lungs, and your heart.
Very cool to be able to see that.
(grunting) Crazy ending.
(metal crunching)
Oh!
D'Vorah just gets smashed right in the rib cage.
It almost, like, inverts.
Some people actually have chest cavities on the inside.
It's called pectus excavatum.
And then people could also have something called
pigeon chest.
Where their chest actually goes the opposite direction,
it goes out.
When somebody gets hit in the chest like that,
we're super worried about blunt trauma to the heart itself.
The heart's a muscle,
and it actually could bleed,
cause bruising.
A lot of times we really worry about the lungs bruising,
'cause if the lung bruises,
that area that actually is bruised,
can't oxygenate tissue.
Holy cow!
I like Mortal Kombat.
- [Video Game Announcer] Mortal Kombat!
- The designers of the game have done a good job,
and have spent a lot of time really integrating anatomy.
And trying as best they can
to not make it realistic, per se,
but showing that the anatomy might be equivalent
in what potentially happens on the inside.
So, really cool to see
from a scientific standpoint.
Very interesting.
The people that taught me, the anatomists,
this is like their forte.
So it was really cool to see and react.
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Thank you so much for watching,
and stay healthy, my friends.
(beep)
(upbeat music) (whistling)