Kroll MW, Kroll LC, Panescu D, Perkins PE, Andrews CJ. High Impedance Electrical Accidents: Importance of Source and Subject Impedance.
ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY. IEEE ENGINEERING IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY SOCIETY. ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 2019;
2019:1769-1775. [PMID:
31946240 DOI:
10.1109/embc.2019.8857037]
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Abstract
UNLABELLED
In most cases, the diagnosis of an electrical injury or electrocution is straightforward. However, there is a necessity for much closer analysis in many cases. There exist sophisticated electrical safety standards that predict outcomes for shocks of various currents applied to different parts of the body. Unfortunately, the actual current is almost never known in an accident investigation. A common source of errors is the assumption that the source (including the return) has zero impedance. Another surprisingly common problem is the erroneous assumption that the body current is equal to the source current capability.
METHODS
We used the following methodology for analyzing such cases: (1) Determine body pathway, (2) Estimate body pathway impedance, (3) Determine source voltage, (4) Determine source impedance, (5) Calculate delivered current using total pathway impedance, and (6) Ignore available current as it is largely confounding in most cases.
RESULTS
We analyzed 6 difficult cases using the above methodology. This includes 2 subtle situations involving pairs of matched case-control subjects where a subject was electrocuted while his work partner was not.
CONCLUSIONS
Careful calculations of the amplitude and duration of the shock is required for understanding the limits and potential causation of such electrical injury. This requires the determination of both the source and body pathway impedance. Available current is usually irrelevant and overemphasized.
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