hmm... interesting topic.
having taken care of people both shot and stabbed in the chest in the e.r., i guess i'll add my 2 cents...
1st, i've never seen someone immediately after being shot or being stabbed in the chest, so i really can't answer what happens immediately.
as far as what happens shortly after the wound is created... everyone so far has neglected the role of emotion, more specifically anxiety... the wounded person's heart rate and breathing rate would go up... and thus it would be hard to scream very long with that going on...
mrtuffpaws has said:
Quote:
If the wound is big enough, you get a sucking wound. A sucking wound is when the diaphragm contracts and expands, it sucks air into the chest cavity through the wound instead of sucking it down the throat into the lungs. The lungs collapse and you die from suffocation. A gunshot wound is big enough, but I don't think a knife wound from a stab would do it. Being long and skinny, the flesh would swell and close the wound.
Now if you think about it, something like a knife entering the chest cavity should put someone into shock pretty quick. Once that happens, the chances of a scream are remote.
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adding to that, it already becomes difficult enough with a sucking chest wound to talk, let alone scream. you have a punctured lung, filling with blood (as its viscera has been compromised), being pushed over to the side from the air filling the cavity (the chest cavity is "sucking" in air), and the other lung is being compressed by the air filling the cavity as well.
in short, you have a hemo-pnuemo-thorax, as the thorax has blood where it shouldn't (outside the lung, and inside the lung but outside of the blood vessels that run in the lung) air where it shouldn't be (outside the lung).
while the person may scream when initially stabbed (i imagine it would hurt like hell)... i'd find it hard to believe that one would be able to scream a few minutes later. i'd imagine the person would be concentrating on trying to breathe, which would be hard enough given the physiologic processes going on in the chest cavity.