A 22-year-old man presented with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the left neck. The rifle used was a .22 caliber filled with multiple small bird-shot pellets . Medical history was noncontributory. Physical examination showed an 8-mm diameter entrance wound in the left posterior oral cavity without active bleeding. Powder burns were present. No exit wound was identified. Except for mild left n...

Aortocaval fistulas are most commonly the result of spontaneous rupture or erosion of an abdominal aortic aneurysm into the inferior vena cava (80-90%). The remaining 10-20% of aortocaval fistulas are usually the result of penetrating or iatrogenic trauma from gunshot or stab wounds. We report the case of a 19-year-old male, status post multiple gunshot wounds. To our knowledge, this is the fir...

A retrospective review of 406 suicidal gunshot wounds to the head, investigated at the Medico-Legal Laboratory of Pretoria, between 1997 and 2000 was performed. Fifty-seven percent of fatal suicidal firearm injury to the head occurred in the 21- to 40-year age range in both male and female victims. Eighty-two percent of all these victims of suicidal firearm fatalities to the head were male. Of ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the discriminatory power of TraumaSCAN-Web, a system for assessing penetrating trauma, using retrospective multi-center case data for gunshot and stab wounds to the thorax and abdomen. METHODS 80 gunshot and 114 stab cases were evaluated using TraumaSCAN-Web. Areas under the Receiver Operator Characteristic Curves (AUC) were calculated for each condition modeled in Traum...