Abstract
Abdominal injury as a result of penetrating or blunt trauma may represent a life-threatening condition requiring rapid diagnosis and treatment. The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma Multi-institutional Hollow Viscus Injury (HVI) study, the largest retrospective hollow viscus injury to date, found the incidence of blunt small bowel injury (BSBI) of 1.1%, blunt colonic injury as 0.3% (30.2% of patients diagnosed with HVI had a colon injury), and the incidence of blunt gastric injury to be much lower (only 4.3% of a total of 2632 patients identified with HVI) [1, 2].
Blunt small bowel injury (BSBI) is an infrequent diagnosis. The knowledge of the mechanism of trauma and types of BSBI are important because the diagnosis of these injuries remains a problem. The introduction of abdominal CT scan as the primary diagnostic method for blunt abdominal trauma in hemodynamically stable patients has provided an accurate assessment of hollow viscus injuries in the presence of specific signs, helping the trauma surgeons to choose the correct management. The risk of missed BSBI is a challenge because delay in the diagnosis may occur and contribute significantly to increase morbidity and mortality.
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Fraga, G.P., Ivatury, R. (2018). CT Scan in Blunt Gastrointestinal Trauma. In: Catena, F., Di Saverio, S., Ansaloni, L., Coccolini, F., Sartelli, M. (eds) CT Scan in Abdominal Emergency Surgery. Hot Topics in Acute Care Surgery and Trauma. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48347-4_5
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