Cardiac injuries

Abstract

Cardiac injury due to penetrating or blunt thoracic trauma is relatively rare but associated with significant morbidity and mortality. Many of these injuries have not been characterized fully by diagnostic imaging so far. With the introduction of fast MDCT an established emergent diagnostic modality is now available for heart imaging, that allows the detection and characterization of a large variety of myocardial, pericardial, vascular and mediastinal injuries. Beside the established methods, like cardiac ultrasound and cardiac angiography, it allows now in the emergency setting a thorough morphologic characterization of injuries and its’ potential bleeding dynamics. This article reviews the spectrum of blunt and penetrating heart injuries as well as the imaging modalities commonly used in the acute trauma setting.