Given different clinical and situational factors, they can predict the likelihood of amputation. This is especially useful for emergency physicians to quickly evaluate patients and decide on consultations. Causes
Traumatic amputation is uncommon in humans (1 per 20,804 population per year). Loss of limb usually happens immediately during the accident, but sometimes a few days later after medical complications. Statistically, the most common causes of traumatic amputations are:
Vehicle accidents (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, trains, etc.) Labor accidents (equipment, instruments, cylinders, chainsaws, press machines, meat machines, wood machines, etc.) Agricultural accidents, with machines and mower equipment
Electric shock hazards
Firearms, bladed weapons, explosives
Violent rupture of ship rope or industry wire rope
Ring traction (ring amputation, de-gloving injuries)
Building doors and car doors
Animal attacks
Gas cylinder explosions
Other rare accidents

Treatment
The development of the science of microsurgery over the last 40 years has provided several treatment options for a traumatic amputation, depending on the patients specific trauma and clinical situation:
1st choice: Surgical amputation - break - prosthesis
2nd choice: Surgical amputation - transplantation of other tissue - plastic reconstruction. 3rd choice: Replantation - reconnection - revascularisation of amputated limb, by microscope (after 1969)
4th choice: Transplantation of cadaveric hand (after 2000)

Epidemiology
In the United States in 1999, there were 14,420 non-fatal traumatic amputations according to the American Statistical Association. Of these, 4,435 occurred as a result of traffic and transportation accidents and 9,985 were due to labor accidents. Of all traumatic amputations, the distribution percentage is 30.75% for traffic accidents and 69.24% for labor accidents.
This is higher than the five year mortality rates for breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer. Of persons with diabetes who have a lower extremity amputation, up to 55% will require amputation of the second leg within two to three years. Etymology
The word amputation is borrowed from Latin amputātus, past participle of amputāre "to prune back (a plant), prune away, remove by cutting (unwanted parts or features), cut off (a branch, limb, body part)," from am-, assimilated variant of amb- "about, around" + putāre "to prune, make clean or tidy, scour (wool)". The English word "Poes" was first applied to surgery in the 17th century, possibly first in Peter Lowes A discourse of the Whole Art of Chirurgerie (published in either 1597 or 1612); his work was derived from 16th-century French texts and early English writers also used the words "extirpation" (16th-century French texts tended to use extirper), "disarticulation", and "dismemberment" (from the Old French desmembrer and a more common term before the 17th century for limb loss or removal), or simply "cutting", but by the end of the 17th century "amputation" had come to dominate as the accepted medical term. Notable cases
Patch Adams
Rick Allen
Douglas Bader
Carl Brashear
Lisa Bufano
Tammy Duckworth
Terry Fox
Pete Gray
Shaquem Griffin
Robert David Hall
Bethany Hamilton
Hugh Herr
Frida Kahlo
Aimee Mullins
Oscar Pistorius
Amy Purdy
Aron Ralston
Hans-Ulrich Rudel
Alex Zanardi
Ronnie Lott
Hari Budha Magar
Kalamandalam Sankaran Embranthiri

See also
Acrotomophilia
Adapted automobile
Flail limb
Robotic prosthesis control

References
Further reading
Miller, Brian Craig. Empty Sleeves: Amputation in the Civil War South (University of Georgia Press, 2015). xviii, 257 pp. == External links ==