In patients who have injuries to the great vessels of the abdomen, the findings on physical examination generally depend on whether a contained hematoma or active hemorrhage is present.1 In the case of contained hematomas around the vascular injury in the retroperitoneum, the base of the mesentery, or the hepatoduodenal ligament, the patient often has only modest hypotension in transit or on ar...

One of the trauma surgeons' daily challenges is the balancing act between negative laparotomy and missed abdominal injury. We opted to characterize the indications that prompted a negative trauma exploratory laparotomy and the rate of missed abdominal injuries in an effort to optimize patient selection for laparotomy. At the Los Angeles County + University of Southern California Medical Center...

introduction: focused assessment with sonography for trauma (fast) is a highly effective first screening tool for initial classification of abdominal trauma patients. the present study was designed to evaluate the outcome of patients with blunt abdominal trauma and positive fast findings. methods: the present prospective cross-sectional study was done on patients over 7 years old with normal ab...

STUDY OBJECTIVE We derive a prediction rule to identify children at very low risk for intra-abdominal injuries undergoing acute intervention and for whom computed tomography (CT) could be obviated. METHODS We prospectively enrolled children with blunt torso trauma in 20 emergency departments. We used binary recursive partitioning to create a prediction rule to identify children at very low ri...

The spleen is one of the organs most frequently injured in blunt abdominal trauma. Computed tomography (CT) scanning can accurately detect splenic injury and is currently the imaging modality of choice in assessing clinically stable patients with blunt abdominal trauma. The CT features of spleen injury include lacerations, subcapsular or parenchymal haematomas, active haemorrhage, and vascular ...