Two weeks after a head-on motorbike crash in Uganda, a 28-year-old woman arrived at an orthopedic outreach camp with an infected thigh wound. New imaging showed a dense, irregular object buried deep in her upper thigh, right beside the major blood vessels. It was bone, measuring 6 by 3 centimeters. Yet her own thighbone was completely intact.
The surgeons who removed it believe the fragment most likely came from the motorbike rider, who was killed in the collision. Their report, published Oct. 10 in the Journal of Surgical Case Reports, describes the case as a bone missile injury, the transfer of bone fragments from one trauma victim into another, and uses it to warn about a rare but serious infection risk in crashes with more than one victim.
