In news that will no doubt prove alarming to hipsters, DJ’s, Harry Styles, and Kate Middleton, it has been reported in a scholarly medical journal that an Australian woman wearing skinny jeans collapsed and had to spend four days in hospital after her too-tight pants cut off the blood supply to her legs.
The denim disaster is reported in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, which reports that the woman had to be cut out of her jeans, and then spent four days on an intravenous drip recovering.
Happily, she made a full recovery, and is presumably only wearing flares these days.
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Associate Professor Thomas Edmund Kimber, of the Neurology Unit at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, wrote, “She had been helping a family member move house. This involved many hours of squatting while emptying cupboards. She had been wearing ‘skinny jeans’, and recalled that her jeans had felt increasingly tight and uncomfortable during the day.
“Later that evening, while walking home, she noticed bilateral foot drop and foot numbness, which caused her to trip and fall.”
The unfortunate fashion victim then spent several hours lying on the ground immobilized in the darkness, before finally managing to summon enough strength to crawl to the side of the road and hail a cab to take her to hospital.
“When she arrived, she had massive, really severe, swelling of both calves to the extent we were unable to take her jeans off without cutting them,” Professor Kimber said.
The woman was put on an intravenous drip and although still weak at the time of discharge four days later, she was able to walk unaided.
“It is well recognized that squatting for long periods of time, regardless of what you are wearing, can occasionally cause compression of the perineal nerve, which is at the knee,” the professor said.
“But this is the first case we are aware of where there has been such severe calf muscle swelling and such involvement of the two main nerves, the perineal and the tibial.”
The professor concluded his article with the scholarly opinion that “The present case represents a new neurological complication of wearing tight jeans.” J-Brand— are you listening?
