This is Jeff Guy, surgery guy C-Rounds.

The topic is lightning strikes.

Recently we had approximately 50-year-old male who was working in his kitchen.

And while working in his kitchen, became the victim of a lightning strike.

The patient heard a loud bang.

And the next thing he's aware of is that his entire body is going numb.

He's on the floor, he's aphasic, and he's been incontinent of stool and urine.

He's able to drag himself out of the kitchen into the room where he struggles to get his clothes changed because of the incontinence.

He's very embarrassed by this.

And then the patient goes on to crawl to get help.

He goes to a local emergency room where he's partially aphasic.

He's weak of the lower extremities.

And his mental status is described by the referring physician as bizarre and fleeting.

They obtain a cat scan of his head, which is normal.

The patient has no signs of external cutaneous burns.

Lightning is a common term for a much more technical process of dielectric breakdown or arcing.

That occurs in the voltage difference between the clouds and other objects such as the level of electric field and the imposing air

exceeds 2 million volts per meter. The current through that arc is just massive

impulse of power entire cities and is extremely brief and the time frame of 10 to 100

milliseconds. It's kind of similar to the static discharge that one has with their hand in a doorknob

where the primary curves can find at the surface of the object of the doorknob and the finger,

and you see the connecting arc.

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