Unusual clinical course Background:Intra-abdominal impalement injuries caused by a penetrating foreign body are rare and often fatal. The mechanism of injury is usually associated with vascular and organ damage, and the course is dynamic, with high morbidity and mortality. Post-traumatic presence of glass pieces in the peritoneal cavity after an old impalement injury is rare.
Case Report:A 52-year-old woman sustained a 4-cm laceration in her lumbar region after falling on a glass table that shattered. After a physical examination and wound exploration in the emergency room, no foreign body was found.The laceration was sutured without X-ray imaging. She was admitted to the Surgical Department 9 months later for diagnosis of lower abdominal pain. In a CT scan of the abdominal cavity, a 19-cm fragment of glass was found intraperitoneally, inter-looped in the pelvic cavity. A laparotomy was performed, during which the foreign body was found and removed. No abdominal organs were injured. Further outpatient treatment was normal.
Conclusions:Potentially minor abdominal impalement injuries can cause serious organ damage. Every patient, even if asymptomatic, and even after trivial injury with a small skin wound, must be suspected of having a hidden foreign body. Accurate visual, manual, and instrumental wound exploration is always necessary. Imaging exams are an important diagnostic method when the presence of a post-traumatic foreign body is suspected.
Damage to the thyroid due to blunt neck injury is rare. About half of the described cases occurred in the thyroid with
pathological changes. They are usually associated with large hematomas of the neck that cause respiratory failure. We
present a case of a patient whose thyroid injury caused rupture of the left thyroid lobe with a hematoma of the mediastinum
and right pleural cavity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.