• The American surgeon · Nov 2014

    Computed tomography to diagnose blunt diaphragm injuries: not ready for prime time.

    • Julie M Sprunt, Carlos V R Brown, Andrew C Reifsnyder, Alex V Shestopalov, Sadia Ali, and W Drew Fielder.
    • University of Texas Southwestern-Austin and University Medical Center Brackenridge, Austin, Texas, USA.
    • Am Surg. 2014 Nov 1; 80 (11): 1124-7.

    AbstractDiaphragm injuries after blunt trauma are uncommon but require early diagnosis to expedite repair. The advancing technology of computed tomography (CT) scanners has improved the detection of almost all traumatic injuries; however, the literature regarding the diagnostic accuracy of CT scan for blunt diaphragm injuries is lacking. The purpose of this study was to determine the CT scan findings in the setting of known blunt diaphragm injury. We performed a retrospective review of all blunt trauma patients with a known diaphragm injury confirmed at laparotomy who also had a preoperative CT scan of the torso. Every CT scan was retrospectively reviewed by a board-certified radiologist for evidence of diaphragm injury as well as associated abdominal and thoracic injuries. Forty-two patients sustaining blunt trauma had preoperative CT scans of the torso and a diaphragm injury confirmed at laparotomy. Only 57 per cent of CT scans showed evidence of diaphragmatic injury. The most common thoracic injury identified was a pulmonary contusion (79%). Although the advancement of imaging technology has markedly improved the diagnosis and management of blunt traumatic injuries, the detection of diaphragm injuries using CT continues to be low and reconstructions do not help in finding diaphragm injuries.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…