Yonago Acta medica 2008;51:73–76
Video-Assisted Thoracic Surgery (VATS) for Stabbing Thoracic Injury
Yuji Taniguchi, Hiroshige Nakamura*, Tomohiro Haruki*, Shinji Fujioka*, Yoshin Adachi*, Ken Miwa*, Satoshi Kamihira†, Kengo Nishimura† and Motonobu Nishimura†
Operating Room Division, *Division of Thoracic Surgery, Tottori University Hospital and †Division of Organ Regeneration Surgery, Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Tottori University Faculty of Medicine, Yonago, Yonago 683-8504 Japan
The patient was a 30-year-old male who was found after he had stabbed himself in the left side of the chest and collapsed. He was brought to our hospital to undergo immediate drainage of the thoracic cavity. The chest X-ray and chest computed tomography findings showed that the knife was situated from the left cardiac border toward the proximity of the diaphragm, thus resulting in hemopneumothorax. The patient’s vital signs were stable, and we believed that it was important to avoid secondary injury when removing the knife from the thoracic cavity. Therefore, we performed video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS). We resected the considerably crushed lung and sutured the lacerated myocardium by VATS. The postoperative course was good. We believe that VATS for thoracic injury can be an effective surgical option if a patient’s vital signs are stable.
Key words: stab wound; thoracic injury; video-assisted thoracic surgery
