Injury
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There is no standardised definition of what constitutes a junctional injury. Although well described in military literature, this is not the case in the civilian setting. This study aims to characterise the epidemiology of the civilian penetrating junctional injuries in our centre. ⋯ Junctional injuries are common and carry a high resource burden. Patients with injuries to the neck, axillae, groin, and buttocks were similar in demographics, resource requirement and cost, although groin injured patients had higher median ISS and cost. Diaphragmatic injuries share some characteristics of junctional injuries, but had significantly higher ISS, blood product use, number of operations, ward length of stay, and cost. The authors support a narrower definition of 'junctional' to exclude diaphragm, such as 'locations adjoining the extremities to the torso'.