Accidental Industrial Oven Blast Injury: A Case Report

A blast is a process where any substance or device, capable of creating a sudden gas expansion, releasing potential energy and thus creating a pressure wave damaging the surrounding objects. Blast injury is becoming more common in non-military population due to terrorist acts and unsafe use of explosive equipment and substances, but it is still rare to see such injuries and deaths. Accidental blasts normally occur at work place which results from handling of potentially hazardous equipment by untrained, unlicensed individuals or by the use of faulty, under maintained equipment. The interpretation of blast injuries carries great importance in understanding the patho-mechanism of these injuries, to correlate the autopsy findings with the circumstances of the case and also help in the management of blast victims. Therefore, an autopsy surgeon should know the peculiarities of blast injuries. We hereby report a case of a 34year old male who was a blast victim of an industrial oven on which he was operating. All the peculiarities and typical features of blast injuries were present at autopsy and an effort was made to correlate the autopsy findings with the circumstances of the case.