Modeling cellular lysis in skeletal muscle due to electric shock.

Abstract

High-voltage electrical trauma frequently results in injury patterns that cannot be completely attributed to Joule heating. An electrical-injury model describing cellular lysis damage caused by supraphysiological electric fields is introduced, and used to evaluate the effects of high-voltage electric shock on the skeletal muscle of a human upper limb in a configuration that simulates hand-to-hand contact. A novel multiresolution admittance method, capable of efficiently handling large computational models while maintaining excellent accuracy, was used to perform the numerical computations. Values for the computed current through the arm and the upper limb impedance are reported.