BACKGROUND Major trauma is associated with chest injuries in nearly 50% of multiple injuries. Thoracic trauma is a relevant source of comorbidity throughout the period of multiply-injured patient care and may require swift and well-thought-out interventions in order to avert a deleterious outcome. In this epidemiological study we seek to characterize groups of different thoracic trauma severity...

OBJECTIVE Thoracic injuries are uncommon in children and few report present on blunt ones. METHODS Between 1994 and 2003, 137 children with blunt thoracic injury were reviewed. RESULTS The mean age of children was 6.9+/-7.3 (1-16) years. Etiology was falls in 46.7%, traffical accidents in 51% and abuse in 2.2%. Average height in fallen-down cases was 6.4+/-2 (range: 3-11) m. Calculated mean...

Rupture of the thoracic aorta is a leading cause of rapid fatality in automobile crashes, but the exact mechanisms of this injury remain unidentified. One commonly postulated mechanism is a differential motion of the aortic arch relative to the heart and its neighboring vessels caused by high-magnitude acceleration of the thorax. This paper investigates acceleration as an aortic injury mechanis...

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 Chylothorax is a rare form of pleural effusion that can be associated with both traumatic and non-traumatic causes. Thoracic duct ligation is often the treatment of choice in postsurgical patients; however the optimal treatment of this disease process after traumatic injury remains unclear 1. We present a rare case of a thoracic duct injury secondary to a blunt thoracic spine fractur...

Introduction Blunt aortic trauma is an infrequent but not rare pathological entity. World Health Organization case reports indicate that the thoracic trauma is responsible for 25% of deaths caused by traumatic thoracic injury, second only to head trauma. Currently there are protocols on the investigation of patients who has sustained blunt thoracic injury and are unstable or have significant fi...

PURPOSE The proposed the thoracolumbar injury classification system (TLICS) for thoracolumbar injury cites the integrity of the posterior ligamentous complex (PLC). However, no report has elucidated the severity of damage in thoracic and lumbar injury with classification schemes by presence of the PLC injury. The purpose of this study was to accurately assess the severity of damage in thoracic ...

Background Firearm – related injuries of the thorax and heart are a major problem worldwide. Mortality rate in non-cardiac thoracic injuries is very low compared with that of cardiac injury. Because of the complexity of the injury a gunshot wound to the heart has the highest mortality rate. The rate of thoracic aorta injuries is burdened with a high mortality (80-90%) and management of this inj...

We present the case of a 74 year-old male with delayed diagnosis of post-traumatic thoracic esophageal perforation that occurred secondary to thoracic vertebral fracture in an ankylosed spine. The injury resulted after a fall from chair secondary to an unconscious collapse due to Ventricular Fibrillation (VF). At 8 days after the injury, the patient was diagnosed with esophageal perforation, se...