Abstract
We reviewed 142 cases of chest trauma during the last eight years from January, 1981. Age of the patients distributed from 3 years to 81 years with the mean age of 41.6 years. One hundred and six cases were male and 36 were female with the ratio of 2.9 to 1.
Among them, 136 cases sustained blunt trauma and 7 penetrating trauma (one sustained both). Simple chest trauma happened in 75 cases (52.8%) and 67 cases (47.2%) suffered from complicated injuries.
While surgical procedures were performed for 6 cases, most cases were administrated conservatively. Twenty seven cases including 6 of the flail chest were managed under mechanical ventilation. In one case of lung contusion, the intra-bronchial hemorrhage was successfully treated by bronchial artery embolization.
There were 19 deaths (13.4%) in which 16 were early death within 16.4±4.7 hours (Mean±SD)of the trauma. Five deaths (3.5%) were considered to be directly related to the chest trauma itself. Compared with the mortality rate of all trauma (8.7%), the one associated with chest injury was high during the same eight-year-period. It is suggested that we should make more effort to improve the survival rate of the chest trauma.
