Penetrating injury to the head is considered a form of severe traumatic brain injury. Although uncommon, most neurosurgical centres would have experienced treating patients with such an injury. Despite the presence of well written guidelines for managing these cases, surgical treatment requires an individualized approach tailored to the situation at hand. We describe a collection of three cases...

INTRODUCTION We report a case of deliberate self-harm in which three three-inch nails were fired from a nail gun resulting in mandibular fixation and two penetrating injuries to the right cardiac ventricle. This combination of high-velocity penetrating injury has not been previously described. CASE PRESENTATION A 69-year-old Caucasian man with a medical history of chronic depression was broug...

PURPOSE We aimed to present the frequency of computed tomography (CT) signs of diaphragmatic rupture and the differences between blunt and penetrating trauma. MATERIALS AND METHODS The CT scans of 23 patients with surgically proven diaphragmatic tears (both blunt and penetrating) were retrospectively reviewed for previously described CT signs of diaphragmatic injuries. The overall frequency o...

Cardiac impalement injury is rare and one of the most severe penetrating chest injuries, often fatal. The management of penetrating cardiac injuries is a challenging one. The success in management of impaling cardiac trauma requires stabilization of the impaling object, expeditious transfer to a facility for open heart surgery, rapid imaging, access to blood and blood products and a ready surgi...

A tree fell on the back of a 77-year-old male. A postmortem computed tomographic pan scan revealed systemic air embolism, multiple rib fractures with a penetrating injury to the aorta, pneumohemothorax, and air in the aorta. A massive amount of air entered the site of a penetrating injury of the aorta. This unique case adds one more cause to the list of documented etiologies of air in the aorta.

Despite concern over chemical, radiological and biological attacks, the majority of direct terrorist-related physical injury to date has been the result of direct trauma. While many terror-related injuries tend to be of greater severity than non-terror related injuries and are characterized by penetrating wounds and the consequences of explosions, there are often a large proportion of persons w...

BACKGROUND Blank cartridge guns are generally regarded as being harmless and relative safe. However recent published articles demonstrated that the gas pressure from the exploding propellant of blank cartridge is powerful enough to penetrate the thoracic wall, abdominal muscle, small intestine and the skull. And there has been a limited number of case reports of ocular trauma associated with bl...

BACKGROUND Low-velocity rubber bullets were used by Israeli police to control riots by Israeli-Arabs in early October, 2000. We aimed to establish the factors that contribute to severity of blunt and penetrating injuries caused by these missiles. METHODS We analysed medical records of 595 casualties admitted. We assessed relation of severity of injury to type of bullet, anatomical region of i...

Eyelid or periocular wounds may be the only initial sign of occult, penetrating intracranial trauma. As in this case, the failure to recognize the injury may contribute to serious and potentially life-threatening complications. The discussion emphasizes that a high degree of suspicion and knowledge of patterns of occult penetrating orbito-cranial injury may help direct appropriate radiological ...