• Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg · Apr 2015

    Retained weapon injuries: experience from a civilian metropolitan trauma service in South Africa.

    • V Kong, Z Khan, S Cacala, G Oosthuizen, and D Clarke.
    • Pietermaritzburg Metropolitan Trauma Service, Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu Natal, 3216, South Africa, victorywkong@yahoo.com.
    • Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg. 2015 Apr 1;41(2):161-6.

    IntroductionRetained weapon (RW) injuries are uncommon, but there is no current consensus on the best management approach.MethodsWe reviewed our experience of 102 consecutive patients with non-missile RWs in a high-volume metropolitan trauma service managed over a 10-year period.ResultsOf the 102 patients, 95 were males (93%), 7 were females (7%), and median age was 24 (21-28) years. Weapons: 73% (74/102) knives, 17% (17/102) screwdrivers, 5% spears, 6% (6/102) others [axe (1), glass fragment (1), stick (1), sickle blade (1), wire (1) and stone (1)].Location8% (8/102) head, 20% (20/102) in the face, 9% (9/102) neck, 14% (14/102) thorax, 25% (26/102) abdomen, 23% (23/102) upper limb, 2% (2/102) lower limb. Four per cent (4/102) were haemodynamically unstable and proceed immediately to the operating theatre for operative exploration and weapon extraction. Imagining: 88 (86%) plain radiographs, 65 (64%) non-contrast CT scans, 41 (40%) contrast CT angiography, 4 (4%) formal angiography. Seventy-two underwent simple extraction, and 29 underwent extract plus open operation. One patient absconded. Specialist surgeons involved in extraction: trauma surgeons (74), neurosurgeons (10), ophthalmic surgeons (11) and ENT surgeons (4). Overall, 92% (94/102) survived to discharge.ConclusionsThe vast majority of patients with RWs will be admitted in a stable condition and haemodynamic instability was almost exclusively seen in the anterior thorax. The most common site was the posterior abdomen. Detailed imagining should be used liberally in stable patients and unplanned extraction in an uncontrolled environment should be strongly discouraged.

      Pubmed     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…