الفهرس 
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Abstract
Chest trauma is a commonly encountered surgical emergency. Most of the data available about chest trauma is in the setting of blunt chest trauma or chest trauma including blunt and penetrating types. This raised the need for a study that reports the pattern and management of penetrating chest injuries.
This was a prospective descriptive study conducted on patients with penetrating chest injuries, admitted to the emergency department of Suez Canal university hospital in the interval between May 2012 and January2013.Patients with blunt chest trauma or who were “dead on arrival” were excluded from the study.
The study recorded the patients’ age, gender, mechanism of injury, new injury severity score (NISS), abbreviated injury scales, the need for thoracostomy tube insertion, blood transfusion, emergency thoracotomy, or mechanical ventilation; development of clotted hemothorax, bronchopleural fistula, or empyema; length of hospital stay, and in-hospital mortality.
54 patients were enrolled to the study. 51 patients (94.4%) were males, while three patients (5.6%) were females. The mean age of patients was 26 years. Most of the patients were between 18 and 35 years. 32 patients (59.3%) had stabs, 12 patients (22.2%) had shotgun injuries and eight patients (14.8%) had bullet injuries. The mean NISS was 17.
45patients (83.3%) had chest tubes inserted. 12 patients (22.2%) required blood transfusion. Eight patients (14.8%) had thoracotomy and 11 patients (20.4%) were mechanically ventilated. Five patients had extrathoracic interventions in the form of abdominal exploration(9.3%). There were fourin-hospital mortality cases (7.4%).
The mean length of hospital stay (LOS) was six days. Parameters that were associated with increase in LOS included higher NISS, chest tube insertion, mechanical ventilation and thoracotomy.
The study highlighted that penetrating chest injuries are more common in male gender and in young age.
The study showed that most patients with penetrating chest trauma can be treated non-operatively, with low morbidity and mortality rates.
The study showed that penetrating chest trauma may be associated with abdominal injuries that may need surgical interference.