Emergency thoracotomy due to an unknown injury
Seen here is the trauma team performing an emergency thoracotomy due to an unknown injury. A thoracotomy is when the trauma doctors make an incision in the chest wall in order to manually pump the heart. Thoracotomy provides access to the chest cavity to control injury-related bleeding from the heart, cardiac compressions to restore a normal heart rhythm, or to relieve pressure on the heart caused by cardiac tamponade (accumulation of fluid in the space between the heart's muscle and outer lining). The procedure was performed in the trauma bay, not the OR! Now you may ask, why would they do such an invasive procedure in the dirty trauma bay?! The answer to that is in the patient's status at the time of procedure. Usually, the patient at the time is crashing and this procedure is done as a last resort. If you can get the heart beating from this procedure, that's all that matters! The team will figure out what to do with the open chest wall after the patient is back alive and vitals are stable. But before then, nothing matters, even high rate of infection, other than keeping the patient alive.Photo by @trauma_time
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