OBJECTIVE To determine the insertional and positional complications encountered by the placement of intercostal chest drains (ICDs) for trauma and whether further training is warranted in operators inserting intercostal chest drains outside level 1 trauma unit settings. METHODS Over a period of 3 months, all patients with or without an ICD in situ in the front room trauma bay of Tygerberg Hos...

1 Harik-Khan R, Fleg J, Wise R. Body mass index and the risk of COPD. Chest 2002; 121:370–376 2 Chapman KR, Tashkin DP, Pye DJ. Gender bias in the diagnosis of COPD. Chest 2001; 119:1691–1695 3 Harik-Khan RI, Wise RA, Fleg JL. The effect of gender on the relationship between body fat distribution and lung function. J Clin Epidemiol 2001; 54:399–406 4 Wise RA, Enright PL, Connett JE, et al. Effe...

INTRODUCTION We aimed to determine a potentially optimal body size index for adjusting the tube current in retrospective ECG-triggered helical 256-slice CT coronary angiography (CTCA) for individualized radiation dose control. METHODS Consecutive patients (n=102) with suspected coronary artery disease underwent retrospective ECG-triggered CTCA with a 256-slice CT scanner. Body mass index (BMI...

Daily routine chest radiographs in the intensive care unit (ICU) have been a tradition for many years. Anecdotal reports of misplacement of life support items, acute lung processes, and extra pulmonary air collections in a small number of patients served as a justification for routine chest radiographs in the ICU. Having analyzed this practice, the ACR Appropriateness Criteria Expert Panel on T...

BACKGROUND Thoracic trauma is the third most common cause of death after abdominal injury and head trauma in polytrauma patients. The purpose of this study was to investigate epidemiological data, treatment and outcome of polytrauma patients with blunt chest trauma in order to help improve management, prevent complications and decrease polytrauma patients' mortality. METHODS In this retrospec...

This study prospectively evaluates clinical course of pyogenic empyema thoracis in 25 children (2 mo to 12 y) treated with injectable antibiotics and chest tube drainage, and followed for 6 weeks. The median (range) age at presentation was 3 y (4 mo to 11 y). The pleural fluid culture was positive in 24% of patients. Staphylococcus aureus was the most commonly isolated organism. The median (ran...

OBJECTIVE Our objective was to determine whether adjustments related to patient age are made in the scanning parameters that are determinants of radiation dose for helical CT of pediatric patients. SUBJECTS AND METHODS This prospective investigation included all body (chest and abdomen) helical CT examinations (n = 58) of neonates, infants, and children (n = 32) referred from outside institut...

A 52-year-old male smoker presented with a 1-week history of fever, left-sided pleuritic chest pain, and body aches. Four days later, cough with hemoptysis developed. He visited the local hospital and was suspected to have left-sided parapneumonic pleural effusion. Repeated attempts at needle aspiration yielded a small amount of pleural fluid, which was exudative with a total leukocyte count of...