• Yüksel Beşir, Orhan Gökalp, Börteçin Eygi, Hasan İner, İhsan Peker, Gamze Gökalp, Levent Yılık, and Ali Gürbüz.
• Department of Cardiovascular Surgery, Katip Celebi University Ataturk Training and Reseacrh Hospital, Izmir, Turkey.
• Ulus Travma Acil Cer. 2015 Jul 1; 21 (4): 266-70.

BackgroundPenetrating cardiac injuries are high-risk, high-mortality injuries considering the outcomes. Therefore, it is important to choose the appropriate incision. In general clinical settings, thoracotomy and median sternotomy are choices of incisions to explore the injury. In this study, the results of median sternotomy and thoracotomy in penetrating cardiac injuries were compared.MethodsBetween January 2003 and December 2013, forty patients, who underwent either thoracotomy or median sternotomy for penetrating cardiac injury, were retrospectively analyzed, and the collected data were compared. Twenty-six patients underwent thoracotomy (Group 1), and fourteen patients underwent median sternotomy (Group 2).ResultsThere was no statistically significant gender difference between the groups. However, the mean age in Group 2 was found to be significantly higher than the one in Group 1 (p<0.05).ConclusionThere were no significant survival differences between the groups in the long term. Incision choice should be determined considering the site of injury and whether there is an accompanying pulmonary injury or not. On the other hand, thoracotomy has some draw backs compared to median sternotomy.

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