Open hemopneumothorax wound management

  Open hemothorax and pneumothorax are injuries to the chest wall by sharp objects or firearms, and the pleural cavity is connected to the premises, and air enters and exits with breathing, with blood accumulation in the pleural cavity. It is a kind of serious chest planing injury and combined with more serious shock and hypoxia, and is also one of the main causes of death in the early stage of thoracic trauma.  Wound management in open hemopneumothorax is an issue that needs to be emphasized. Like open pneumothorax, wound management cannot be done by simply suturing the external wound, which is a common practice in many emergency rooms. We recommend that when the clinician handles such a patient, after maintaining circulatory and respiratory stability, he or she should perform the necessary ancillary examinations to determine the intra-thoracic injuries, where and how much bleeding is present, whether there are other combined injuries, whether there are foreign bodies present at the injury site, etc., and should be prepared to perform open-chest exploration. If there is no obvious serious injury or combined injury, then simple debridement can be performed and the wound can be sutured for observation.  Emergency treatment of open hemopneumothorax: Open hemopneumothorax requires immediate treatment because of the immediate risk of life threatening injury.  1.Immediate debridement and suturing to close the chest wound, in case of emergency, petroleum jelly gauze can be used to tightly block the wound, and then fixed with adhesive tape to change the open hemothorax to closed hemopneumothorax, but of course, the danger of tension pneumothorax must be prevented.  2, in the case of serious injury should be immediately tracheal intubation for mechanical breathing, careful examination of the wound, placement of chest drainage, and then close the chest cavity.