Introduction: Traumatic hemothorax (HT) or intrapleural bleeding is not so rare complication of thoracic trauma, so the aim was to present the incidence of this complication among injured patients and assess it as an indicator of severity.
Methods: A retrospective study comprised 681 injured patients with thoracic trauma admitted to Thoracic Surgery Department or Intensive Care Unit of University Clinical Centre of Kosovo, Prishtina, in period of 3 years. The patients with HT were assessed on the nature and mechanism of thoracic trauma, complexity of thoracic trauma, joint intra and extra-thoracic injuries, surgical therapy, complications, and mortality.
Results: There were 136 (20.0%) out of 681 patients with HT, out of these 22 (16.2%) were children. 70 (51.5%) had suffered from HT after blunt thoracic trauma; 66 (48.5%) had HT with penetrating thoracic trauma. Majority were male 129 (95.0%), and only few were female patients (n=7; 5.0%). The main etiologic factors were traffic accidents, falls and attacks by firearm or stab wounds. Surgical therapy consisted of observation, thoracentesis, thoracostomy tube drainage, rarely there was a need for applying urgent thoracotomy (8.1%). Elective thoracotomy happened in 2.2% and decortications in 6.6% of cases.
Conclusion: Thoracic trauma required careful surveillance to take actions in time for patients who needed surgery correction. Presence of any of associated HT injuries triggered a suspicion of possible complications and contributed to the longer length of stay in the intensive care unit.