Do doctors photograph bullet wounds during surgery?

[500grains]

I am thinking that could be a gold mine of information. Medical records are anonymously studied for many reasons and this seems a good one.

[mdain]

I've never seen it done in either the ER, or trauma surgery. The focus is typically on saving lives. That's not to say that it doesnt happen. I have seen photos taken at scene, and obviously, during post mortem exams. However, those are not for research, as much as they are for evidence.

[Hot Holster]

I don't believe it's done unless there are some extenuating circumstances involved. I have seen LE personnel taking photos in the ER prior to surgery for their reports.

I think if the patient had an MRI done before going into surgery, those images can be read as to bullet travel, damage, and final location if the round if it still remained in the body.

[Voodoo_Man]

Not in my experience.

Many bullet wounds look exactly the same, only time they get photographed is when there is a burn mark (close or contact shot) or when there are fibers or such around the wound. However, I have only seen this done on dead bodies.

Most of the time when a person gets shot, and they live, it is much more interesting to see what the bullet did inside the body (to bone and muscle) than anything else.

[Hmac]

Maybe. Depends on the circumstances. Usually not unless it's a particularly interesting injury. Given the limitations of intra-operative photography, the operative report by the surgeon will describe the injury more accurately than such photographs can.

[Odd Job]

Certainly in South Africa the medical staff don't photograph surface wounds unless there is a direct benefit to the care of the patient. Typically that will be in the realm of plastic surgery for disfiguring wounds where the surface injury has to be documented with a view to planning a treatment or procedure.
Generally a live patient has a right to privacy and if you want to take photos of him you have to satisfy ethical considerations (a lengthy process which must be completed by a researcher who takes photographs of injured patients). That ethical clearance will stipulate the parameters involved and the agreed timings and equipment involved in the taking of photographs with the following requirements:

1) The photographs cannot be used in a manner which leads to the patient's identity being revealed in the image. This means that all the processing has to be secure and any publication or presentation of the images can only happen if the images are redacted OR if they cannot be redacted the patient must provide written consent for the publication of those images in a certain medium.

2) The taking of photographs must not impinge on or delay the care of the patient.

So, to answer 500grains: although medical records ARE routinely studied in an anonymous format, photographs are unlikely to be part of the gunshot patient's medical record AND even if they are, the photograph is not easily anonymised as the content of the image is potentially a patient identifiable mechanism.
It isn't the same as CT scans or text-based results. It can't be done retrospectively and if it is done prospectively, you need to set up a detailed protocol and get it ethics approved. In my case that approval process took a few months and the committee had me change some aspects of the protocol before it was accepted.

The other thing you have to consider is that photographs don't tell the whole story. You may be interested in the clothing, the radiology, clinical findings, recovered projectile materials and even the patient's opinion. It has to be a coordinated data collection if it is to be worth anything.

Even then, there will be missing data related to scene variables:

1) Range of fire, intervening materials, number of shots fired
2) Projectile type and velocity (there may be no retained projectile or it may be retained but not accessible within the limitations of the clinical handling of the patient)
3) Patient statements can be deliberately false, or influenced by first responders or unintentionally inaccurate due to their condition. They may simply not know all the details
4) Evidence is frequently missing, especially clothing evidence. Clothes can be cut by paramedics, the patient can change the clothing before attending hospital and various other contaminating mechanisms can come into play. That's because the primary intent is care for the patient even at the expense of forensic data, whereas if the person is dead you have the luxury of recording and analysing whatever you want...

[calvin118]

Never in my experience.

[Caduceus]

I've never seen it done in either the ER, or trauma surgery. The focus is typically on saving lives. That's not to say that it doesnt happen. I have seen photos taken at scene, and obviously, during post mortem exams. However, those are not for research, as much as they are for evidence.

This.

Though there was one guy I wish I had taken a pic of - tried to suck start a shotgun and missed his brain. Guy came in alert and ambulatory.

[auto10mm]

I have never photographed bullets removed from patients. Most of the time I take bullets out they are very fragmented after striking bone. The fragments get sent to pathology for documentation and then possibly to LE for forensics.

[WS6]

If they do, you will never see it. HIPPA.