introduction: penetrating cardiac injuries generally occur secondary to gunshot or stab wounds and have a high mortality rate. they are rare and often fatal in children. when a foreign object penetrates the myocardium, it is dangerous to remove it, suddenly, and should be removed gradually to prevent excessive bleeding. case report: we report a case of an unusual penetrating cardiac injury in a...

In a recent issue of Injury, Galluccio et al. presented a stimulating case 8 which should provoke us to reconsider the boundaries of what is possible after cardiac arrest secondary to apparent blunt trauma. This report follows a previous study in Injury reporting survival after cardiac arrest after trauma. 24 Their patient, a 42-year-old male driver, crashed his vehicle at 60 km/h and was found...

The post cardiac injury syndrome is characterized by the development of a fever, pleuropericarditis, and parenchymal pulmonary infiltrates in the weeks following trauma to the pericardium or myocardium. According to previous reports, almost all cases develop after major cardiac surgery or a myocardial infarction. Recently, a few reports have described post cardiac injury syndrome as a complicat...

BACKGROUND Thoracic injuries are the third most common injuries in trauma patients with cardiac injuries amongst the most lethal. Imaging is essential in diagnosis and triage of patients with pericardial injuries, and this review aims to highlight the spectrum of imaging findings of pericardial trauma. Focussed assessment with sonography for trauma (FAST) is the preferred initial examination, b...

Thoracic trauma is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in both adults and children. It is a leading cause of death in approximately 25% of multiple trauma patients and, when associated with other injuries, it causes death in additional 50% of multiple trauma patients, usually as a result of hypoxia and hypovolemia. When cardiac trauma is not involved, mortality from isolated penetrat...

BACKGROUND In this article, the outcomes, indications and methods of emergency department service resuscitative thoracotomy in cardiac and/or respiratory arrest patients after thoracic trauma are discussed. METHODS Between January 2004 and December 2010, nine resuscitative thoracotomies were performed after thoracic trauma in the emergency department of our hospital. The records of the patien...

Introduction: Penetrating cardiac injuries generally occur secondary to gunshot or stab wounds and have a high mortality rate. They are rare and often fatal in children. When a foreign object penetrates the myocardium, it is dangerous to remove it, suddenly, and should be removed gradually to prevent excessive bleeding. Case report: We report a case of an unusual penetrating cardiac injury in a...

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to examine the mortality rate of penetrating cardiac trauma in a large urban hospital. METHODS This was a retrospective study over a period of 5 years and 5 months of all patients admitted alive with a stab or a gunshot cardiac injury. RESULTS There were 310 patients with a stab wound and 63 with a gunshot wound. The overall mortality rate was 19%. T...

PURPOSE Traumatic cardiac injury (TCI) is a challenge for trauma surgeons as it provides a short thera- peutic window and the management is often dictated by the underlying mechanism and hemodynamic status. The current study is to evaluate the factors influencing the outcome of TCI. METHODS Prospectively maintained database of TCI cases admitted at a Level-1 trauma center from July 2008 to Ju...

A 43-year-old healthy Amish man presented to the emergency department with a history of blunt trauma to the chest following a horse kick. The blunt trauma happened 6 hours before presentation. He also reported loss of consciousness for a brief period of 5 minutes. After regaining consciousness, he experienced constant dull ache in his chest that radiated to his left shoulder. He presented to th...