Trauma during pregnancy poses a potentially tragic risk to both the fetus and mother, making its management particularly challenging. Here, we present the case of a 35-year-old woman at 34 weeks and 2 days gestation who was in a motor vehicle accident and subsequently suffered placental abruption and underwent an emergency cesarean section. We also present a review of traumatic placental abruption and its epidemiology. On arrival at the trauma bay, the patient showed no significant abdominal findings other than a seat belt sign. However, 2 hours after admission, the patient developed abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. Ultrasonography revealed no clear evidence of placental abruption. This case demonstrates the necessity of close maternal and fetal monitoring with cooperation between the trauma and obstetric teams. Even in the absence of typical symptoms such as abdominal pain on initial presentation, a high-energy mechanism of injury should be suspected.
Pneumoperitoneum usually presents as a surgical emergency, especially in patients with a history of trauma. However, we recently encountered an atypical case of pneumoperitoneum at a hysterectomy site following blunt trauma, indicating that immediate laparotomy may not always be necessary. In this report, we present the case of a 45-year-old woman who was transferred to our trauma center from a local hospital after being involved in a traffic accident the day before. Although she underwent an emergency laparotomy, no bowel perforation was detected. Instead, a rupture was found at the site of a hysterectomy that had been performed 8 months earlier. After repairing the hysterectomy site, the pneumoperitoneum resolved, and the patient was subsequently discharged without further complications.
Purpose Open pelvic bone fractures are relatively rare and are considered more severe than closed fractures. This study aimed to compare the clinical outcomes of open and closed severe pelvic bone fractures.
Methods Patients with severe pelvic bone fractures (pelvic Abbreviated Injury Scale score, ≥4) admitted at a single level I trauma center between 2016 and 2020 were retrospectively analyzed. Patients aged <16 years and those with incomplete medical records were excluded from the study. The patients were divided into open and closed fracture groups, and their demographics, treatment, and clinical outcomes were compared before and after 1:2 propensity score matching.
Results Of the 321 patients, 24 were in the open fracture group and 297 were in the closed fracture group. The open fracture group had more infections (37.5% vs. 5.7%, P<0.001) and longer stays in the intensive care unit (median 11 days, interquartile range [IQR] 6–30 days vs. median 5 days, IQR 2–13 days; P=0.005), but mortality did not show a statistically significant difference (20.8% vs. 15.5%, P=0.559) before matching. After 1:2 propensity score matching, the infection rate was significantly higher in the open fracture group (37.5% vs. 6.3%, P=0.002), whereas the length of intensive care unit stay (median 11 days, IQR 6–30 days vs. median 8 days, IQR 4–19 days; P=0.312) and mortality (20.8% vs. 27.1%, P=0.564) were not significantly different.
Conclusions The open pelvic fracture group had more infections than the closed pelvic fracture group, but mortality was not significantly different. Aggressive treatment of pelvic bone fractures is important regardless of the fracture type, and efforts to reduce infection are important in open pelvic bone fractures.
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Severe soft tissue injuries in multiple trauma patients—a challenge we can meet? A matched-pair analysis from the TraumaRegister DGU® Nora Kirsten, Georg Maximilian Franke, Rolf Lefering, Tim Klüter, Matthias Weuster, Michael Müller, Sebastian Lippross, Andreas Seekamp, Stefanie Fitschen-Oestern Frontiers in Medicine.2025;[Epub] CrossRef