Blood appeared in the tracheal tube and bronchoscopy revealed ongoing bleeding from the left lung which required resection of the lingula. Weaning from CPB was initially unsuccessful and we suspected that there had been injury to the left main stem either caused by the
initial stab or by the hemostatic sutures. The left anterior descending artery was grafted using the internal mammary artery and a vein graft was anastomosed to the circumflex artery. The patient was thereafter successfully weaned from CPB. Figure 1 The left ventricular injury almost penetrating the left ventricular wall, notice the left anterior descending ABT-737 order coronary artery (large black arrow) with the first diagonal branch (small
black arrow). All the photos are taken from the anaesthesiologist point of view and the white arrow indicates the caudal direction. Figure 2 The injured left lung (upper lobe, lingula). Figure 3 The wound repair with bovine pericardial strips. Figure 4 The completed repair of the left ventricular wound. Post-operatively, the patient had signs of a selleck chemical stroke and a CT scan revealed a cerebral infarction. One week after surgery he was transferred to the neurological intensive care unit. After three weeks he was awake and self-ventilating. He was moved to his local hospital and was discharged after 6 weeks with only a minor deficit affecting the left upper extremity. Discussion We report the case of a young male patient with a major cardiac stab wound combined with lung injury. Our patient was stabbed during a violent quarrel, thus being a typical stab victim, however, in Japan suicide attempts seem to be equally frequent [18, 23]. In large series, gunshot wounds (GSW) are the predominant
cause of cardiac penetrating BV-6 trauma [2, 4, 6, 29]. In Norway, this type of injury is obviously less common but still existing [37–39]. Knife is the most common weapon for stab injuries, followed by other sharp items such as screwdrivers [34], ice picks [19], chopsticks, pneumatic nailgun nails [14, 20, 40] but also curiosities as barb from a sting ray [28]. Fractured ribs or sternum are also reported to cause cardiac penetration [41]. Pneumatic nails might be shot without the patient noticing and cause surprise when detected by CT scan Celecoxib or eccocardiography imbedded in the heart [14, 20]. The iatrogenic penetrations of the heart due to different medical devices (pacemaker leads, intracoronary stents, Amplatzer devices) are not discussed in this paper. Penetrating cardiac wounds are mostly fatal either due to cardiac tamponade, exsanguination or coronary artery injury [1]. Clarke reports that of 1064 patients with stab wounds to the chest 104 were operated and 76 were found to have a cardiac injury [3] . The overall mortality was 10% giving an impression of low mortality in this particular group of cardiac injuries.