Penetrating stab injuries at a single urban unit: are we missing the point?

Abstract

Although many patients with penetrating trauma can be safely managed conservatively, our study shows that over half required surgical intervention. These data highlight the need for a trauma team in each Irish centre receiving trauma with a clear need for general surgeons on emergency on-call rotas to be experienced in trauma management. There is an urgent need to centralise the management of trauma to a limited number of designated trauma centres where expertise is available by surgeons with a special interest in trauma management.

Emergency resuscitative thoracotomy performed in European civilian trauma patients with blunt or penetrating injuries: a systematic review

“…In a study from Northern Norway ( n  = 142) [23], <3 % of all patients required hemostatic surgery on admission, and only 5 patients had an emergency thoracotomy, with no survivors. In another study from Dublin [24], 5 % of penetrating trauma victims had a thoracotomy, although no further data was provided on indication nor on outcome in this report. However, these reports indicate that emergency salvage procedures are not commonly performed in European trauma populations [23, 24, 33].…”

“…The study descriptives, patient demographics and main findings are reported in Table 1. A further two publications were found from Norway and Ireland [23, 24]. Upon author contact, we were informed that 5 resuscitative emergency thoracotomies were performed, with no survivors in Tromsø, Norway.…”

Comparison between isolated serial clinical examination and computed tomography for stab wounds in the anterior abdominal wall

“…A bdominal penetrating wounds are frequently attended at trauma centers, in special due to urban violence and suicide attempts 1 . They include stab wounds, and the abdomen is one of the most usual inflicted location 2 . Management of patients with anterior abdominal stab wounds is controversial, particularly of those without any signs that could justify immediate surgery (peritonitis, hemodynamic instability).…”