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Eur J Cardiothorac Surg 2004;26:386
© 2004 Elsevier Science NL

Editorial comment

First Department of Thoracic Surgery, General Hospital for Chest Diseases "Sotiria" 34A Konstantinoupoleos str., 15562 Holargos, Athens, Greece

^* Tel.: +30-210-651-0388; fax: +30-210-654-7695
e-mail: kallatha@otenet.gr

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

Emergency thoracotomy (ET) as a life-saving measure either in a prehospital or hospital setting remains a controversial procedure. Its role in traumatic cardiac arrest is defined as resuscitative allowing the evacuation of pericardial tamponade, direct control of intrathoracic hemorrhage, open cardiac massage and cross-clamping of the descending aorta.

In this issue of the European Journal of Cardiothoracic Surgery the authors Athanasiou et al. have reviewed their experience with ET in a prehospital or hospital setting (53 patients in 9 years) with a high survival rate of 18.8% and suggest that ET might be a significant procedure in a well-selected group.

Although cardiopulmonary arrest after trauma is associated with a poor prognosis, there are also other reports on the use of resuscitative thoracotomy in the emergency department that seem to hold some promise for injured patients with cardiopulmonary arrest [1–6]. Generally, the ET literature consists of retrospective series suffering from . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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Emergency thoracotomy in the pre-hospital setting: a procedure requiring clarification

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Eur. J. Cardiothorac. Surg. 2004 26: 377-385. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]