“Degloving” is a term you might have heard – or a diagnosis you might have faced – for work injuries. These are often quite serious injuries, and it is important to understand what it means for your diagnosis, treatment, and the effect on your ability to work.
Degloving usually refers to a hand injury where the skin is pulled up or off, almost like unrolling a glove from your hand. These injuries are often quite serious, and they can come in multiple forms. One of those might even be hard to diagnose or notice because there is no open wound. Degloving is a type of avulsion injury, which can actually happen anywhere in the body, not just the hand. In any case, the injury requires significant healing time, and serious cases can even involve amputation – whether traumatic or surgical.
For help with a degloving injury in Pennsylvania, call our Certified Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Lawyers today at Cardamone Law at (267) 651-7945.
What is a Degloving Injury?
The hand is made up of layers coming out from the bone, followed by tendons and muscle, then a fascia (a membrane around the muscle groups), then a layer of subcutaneous fat, then the skin on top of that. With degloving, force applied against your skin pulls the skin and fat away from the fascia, separating the two.
In a typical degloving case, the force actually cuts open your skin, causing the skin and fat to peel away from the muscle and fascia, which can look like a glove being rolled or pulled off your hand, except it is your skin. The injury can even push further in, potentially causing traumatic amputations.
Types of Degloving
The severity of a degloving injury can vary wildly, from something akin to a cut all the way to shearing most of the skin off your hand or even removing fingers at the joints. However, there are two specific categories of degloving to be aware of: open and closed.
Open
In an open degloving injury, there is a wound where whatever struck or slid against your skin catches and pulls the skin open. This makes it quite obvious what the injury is and often leads to the most severe outcomes and worst trauma.
Closed
However, the other type is a closed injury. Also referred to as a Morel-Lavallée lesion, this occurs when force is applied to your skin, pushes it apart, and separates the fat and skin from the fascia, but there is no cut. This essentially creates a pocket between the layers, much like a loose bed sheet on a bed with nothing holding the outer layers in place.
You will likely have bruising and perhaps internal bleeding and blood pooling with a closed degloving injury, but it might be harder to detect that the layers have actually separated. This might make treatment longer and involve multiple rounds of care to get things back in working order.
You may also need good documentation in your medical records so our Pennsylvania work injury lawyers can use them to prove your injury as part of your claim.
Effects of a Degloving Injury
Degloving can have many effects and requires multiple potential treatments to heal the wounds:
Open Wounds
If your degloving injury is open, then it is prone to infection and such. You will often need stitches to reattach the skin.
This could keep you from work for at least a few weeks while it heals.
Devascularization
If the blood vessels getting to your skin or to the fingers or other affected parts of the hand lose their connection to the rest of your circular system, they need to be reattached. This often requires vascular surgery to restore blood flow to the affected areas.
This can keep you from work for an even longer time.
Reattachment
The forces applied to your hand can often cut you and amputate fingers at the joint. These can often be reattached with quick medical intervention, but the wound often has rough skin flaps and may be difficult to get a good connection, potentially resulting in imperfect reattachments or lost function.
If a reattachment is successful, it may allow you to return to limited work tasks in a few months. However, motor skills might not return to normal for a long time, making it hard to return to full-capacity work.
Skin Grafts
Because the skin can often be seriously damaged, stitching you up might not be enough. Skin grafts may be necessary to restore proper skin coverage and connections, especially if there was a delay in treatment and the skin was not able to be properly reattached.
These surgeries could take a while to fully heal, and motor skills might be affected from scarring and such.
Can You Get Degloving Injuries in Other Parts of Your Body?
Degloving is a form of avulsion, an injury where a body part is traumatically torn away. You can technically get avulsion injuries anywhere, though we typically do not call them degloving in other locations.
For example, someone run over by a bulldozer might have the blade scrape against them, taking skin and tissue off their leg. This is very similar to a degloving injury and has similar treatment, but we call it an avulsion when it happens somewhere else.
What Causes Degloving Injuries in Pennsylvania Work Accidents?
Degloving injuries are caused by shearing forces – that is, forces that move in opposite directions or a force that pushes back against the direction your hand, arm, or finger is moving in.
Rings
One common way degloving happens is when a ring gets caught against something and then scrapes against your finger. Even though rings are blunt, they can still scrape off the skin and potentially tear away segments of your finger.
This can happen in surprisingly random and surprising ways, such as in the famous case of comedian Jimmy Fallon slipping and falling in his kitchen and striking his ring against the counter.
This is also called “ring avulsion” and is a common reason workers are often encouraged to take off rings or wear silicone rings while working.
Machinery
Machines with moving parts can get caught on your hands, fingers, sleeves, or even gloves, potentially tearing away at your hands and causing degloving or avulsion injuries.
Auto Accidents
Auto accidents can cause nearly any injury you can imagine. Accidents involving cars, trucks, construction vehicles, forklifts, etc., all have the potential to cause degloving injuries, depending on how the accident happened.
Call Our Pennsylvania Work Injury Lawyers Today
If you suffered an injury at work, our Pennsylvania work hand injury lawyers can help. Call Cardamone Law for a free case review at (267) 651-7945.
