Forensic assessment of lung injuries and correlations between pattern of thoracic trauma and lung injuries

1 INTRODUCTION Thoracic trauma (TT) is all injuries of thoracic wall and organs within the thorax Thoracic trauma is broadly categorized by mechanism into blunt (BTT) or penetrating trauma (PTT) [ J Thoracic ưauma is one of the most commonly found injuries among traffic accidents and often results in severe stage and high mortality rate Prior to the 20th century, the majority of thoracic trauma victims were soldiers while the number of work accidents was minor let alone a tiny number of traffic accidents From tire mid-20th century, thanks to the advance of technology and the proliferation of care as vehicles and highway systems, the quantity of thoracic accidents broke out and the number of injuries and deaths caused by traffic accidents increased exponentially [2] In the world scale TT is a leading cause of hospitalization as well as death, accounting for 10% of traumatic hospitalizations and 25-50% of traumatic deaths [3] The main reason of TT is road traffic accidents (RTA), making up for 80% of all TT cases, the percentage is even higher in counưies with low to mid incomes [4] In Vietnam while ther e IS lacking of detail statistics on TT of all causes, road-traffic-accidents-related TT was the reason behind 50% of 8248 traffic-related deaths found in 20IS [5] In the period of 1989-1998 die number of traffic accidents climbed rapidly with head injury was tire most prominent cause Nowadays due to the improvement of traffic infrastructure and die growth in number of high speed personal vehicle owners, the pattern of injuries has become greatly different compared to the past Newly enacted policies on road transport ãw.- zpi&r < 4ằ H? ô* r « • policy and safe!}-, especially legalization of helmet laws for motorbike also play an important role to the shift of the pattern, from head injuries to thoracic and other traumas [6] In TT scenarios, lung is the most vulnerable organ BTT tends to cause more severe lung injuries with higher mortality rate than PTT Conduction of a research to assess lung injury pattern in more detail manner and the correlations between pattern of thoracic trauma and lung injuries is an urgent need as it would provide a aid to the clinical doctors in diagnosing and treating wounded victims Thereby, elucidating the injuries and it relevant to other thoracic injuries would lielp to improve the diagnosis and treating procedures, minimize the secondary injuries and lower the mortality rate and overall, improve the outcome of traumatic victims Those amelioration would eventually contribute to ease the social burden of diseases While there are several studies on IT airi lung injur} in Vietnam, most of them are focus on the TT in clinical situations For the forensic approach, there are not many research on the field conducted recently Luu Sy Hung et al (2008) have reported on similar assessment, however the research only cover cases from 20042007 which is outdate by 2021 Base on these aforementioned scenarios, to pro\ide more up-to-date data and statistics, this study was performed with two puiposes as follows: Firstly, assess the common pattern of lung injuries in recorded victims Secondly, evaluate the correlations between pattern of thoracic trauma and lung injuries •w.'