Bicycle accident & Acute dilatation of stomach

[tanginitoo]

My father's only sister died as the result of a fall from a bicycle at the tender age of 16 years. Recently I sent for her death certificate which did not mention any sort of accident, only that the cause of death was

Acute dilatation of the Stomach

Can anyone please tell me what this actually means (when I googled it I only came up with the term in relation to animals) and if it could have been caused by the family story of the bicycle accident?

Thanks, Tanginitoo

[ChristineR]

Most of what came up on google related to humans, including an article directly relating to a similar subject.

"Blunt trauma abdomen is a surgical emergency . A subtle to acute clinical manifestations occur. Single to multiple organ damage can be inflicted. Blunt abdominal trauma leading to acute gastric dilatation is a rare entity. This can be encountered in many conditions. It has rapid progression with high mortality if untreated."

"A 13 year old female presented to us after 3 hours history of fall suffering upper blunt abdominal trauma. She has upper abdominal pain, nausea and few episodes of non-copious vomiting."

Nasty, poor girl, I think that we all can recall a fall from a bike and getting the handlebar in the gut.

[mandaloon]

I have an old copy of " The Universal home doctor" probably printed in the 1940's which describes Dilatation of the stomach as " a Great deal of gas in the stomach, which is causing it to be blown out" which doesn't help a great deal either. could this be caused by falling off a bike ?, well I had a friend who came off her bike as a child , went over the handle bars but did a lot of internal injury to her intestines in the process. Falling on to the end of a handlebar at speed, can do a lot of Damage! I suspect that the build up of gas was a result of other internal injuries rather than the actual cause of death