In most cases the only damage a trendy pair of jeans will do is to your wallet but one Adelaide woman learned there are some unforeseen costs to being über fashionable.
The 35-year-old woman wound up in the hospital after she spent hours in skinny jeans while helping a relative move house.
In the case study, reported in the journal Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry, doctors stated that the move involved “many hours of squatting while emptying cupboards.”
The woman had allegedly tripped over in the evening after the move and was unable to get up. She spent several hours lying on the ground before she was discovered as she had become temporarily paralysed in her ankles and toes and had lost feeling in her lower legs and feet.
Associate Professor Thomas Kimber, a consultant neurologist at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, told ABC radio Adelaide that upon presenting to the hospital medical staff had to cut the woman’s tight jeans from her legs to be able to treat her.
“When she arrived she had massive swelling of her calf muscles, they had to actually cut the jeans from her, they weren’t able to remove them any other way,” the neurologist explained.
Doctors found signs of compartment syndrome and damaged muscle and nerve fibres in the patient’s lower legs as a result of prolonged compression from the tight pants.
“She had really cut off the blood supply to her calf muscles, they had become massively swollen, and as a result of that she had suffered compression to two of the major nerves in her lower leg and had developed this leg weakness as a result,” Kimber said.
While the swelling of compartment syndrome can lead to permanent muscle and nerve damage, or amputation the patient in this case fared much better.
The woman was put on an intravenous drip. Four days later she made a full recovery and was released from hospital.
In documenting their case findings Professor Kimber and colleagues concluded the woman had quite literally been a “fashion victim”.
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