• AJR Am J Roentgenol · Mar 1992

    Acute adrenal injury after blunt abdominal trauma: CT findings.

    • D W Burks, S E Mirvis, and K Shanmuganathan.
    • Department of Diagnostic Radiology, University of Maryland Medical Center, Baltimore 21201.
    • AJR Am J Roentgenol. 1992 Mar 1; 158 (3): 503-7.

    AbstractDuring a 32-month period, adrenal injuries were diagnosed in 20 (2%) of 1120 patients who had abdominal CT for assessment of blunt force trauma. Injuries were unilateral in 17 patients (12 right-sided and five left-sided) and bilateral in three (23 total adrenal injuries) and were accompanied by concurrent ipsilateral thoracic or abdominal injuries in all but one patient. Nineteen (83%) of the adrenal injuries appeared as discrete round to oval hematomas expanding the adrenal gland, two (9%) appeared as diffuse irregular hemorrhage obliterating the gland, and two (9%) appeared as uniform swelling of the adrenal gland. Associated CT findings included "stranding" of the periadrenal fat caused by blood in 14 cases (61%) and posterior pararenal hemorrhage mimicking a thickened diaphragmatic crus in nine cases (39%). In general, these injuries had no significant medical sequelae, but acute adrenal insufficiency developed in one patient with bilateral lesions; in another patient with an adrenal hematoma compressing the inferior vena cava, caval thrombosis developed. The potential for delayed bleeding or infection within the hemorrhagic gland exists, but these did not occur in any of our patients. Our experience indicates that adrenal injury resulting from blunt trauma is more common than suggested by previous reports and emphasizes the importance of careful inspection of the adrenal glands in patients in whom lower thoracic or upper abdominal injuries are detected by CT.

      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…