Technical note: rapid, large-volume resuscitation at resuscitative thoracotomy by intra-cardiac catheterization

An emergency thoracotomy may be life-saving by achieving four goals: (i) releasing cardiac tamponade, (ii) controlling haemorrhage, (iii) allowing access for internal cardiac massage and (iv) clamping the descending aorta to isolate circulation to the upper torso in damage control surgery. We theorize that a new goal should be achieving rapid, large-volume fluid resuscitation and we describe a technique to achieve this.