Der Unfallchirurg
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In patients suffering from multiple injury, chest trauma is often the main cause of fatality. A case report is given and the literature reviewed. A 49 years old motorcyclist hit a car frontally in a road accident. ⋯ This case shows that the severity of chest trauma does not necessarily correlate with the initial clinical and radiological findings. Even with all diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, a fatal outcome could not be prevented. This demonstrates the role of chest injury as a major and unforeseeable cause of death in multiple trauma patients.
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Comparative Study
[The value of subjective estimation of the severity of thoracic injuries by the emergency surgeon].
Thorax trauma (TT) is associated with a high rate of pulmonary failure and increased mortality. To prevent these complications, the German trauma system recommends intubation and chest tube insertion at the scene of the accident, even in cases without acute respiratory dysfunction. Due to the possible life threatening complications of the therapy, the emergency surgeon should be able to correctly identify a TT at the scene. Therefore, we retrospectively compared the evaluation of chest trauma by the emergency surgeon with objective injury severity according to the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). ⋯ Due to the high rate of misclassification and possible severe complications caused by therapy, and without having any benefit in terms of outcome, intubation and chest tube insertion should not be carried out in vital, stable patients.