Abstract
Traumatic cardiac arrest is frequently encountered in the air medical transport environment,
and resuscitative thoracotomy is a procedure that is sometimes performed in an attempt
to salvage these critically injured patients. Focused assessment with sonography for
trauma (FAST) is a point-of-care ultrasound protocol commonly used in trauma patients
to detect the presence of free fluid in the intraperitoneal and pericardial spaces.
The authors present a case of an adult female victim of a motor vehicle collision
whose prehospital FAST scan revealed significant hemoperitoneum without hemopericardium.
When she developed cardiac arrest, these ultrasound findings aided in the decision
to perform resuscitative thoracotomy and helped guide the sequence of maneuvers with
prioritization given to cross-clamping the aorta. This case highlights the utility
of prehospital ultrasound in yielding timely, actionable diagnostic information that
can inform the performance of a high-acuity low-occurrence procedure in the air medical
transport environment.
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: July 01, 2022
Identification
Copyright
© 2022 Air Medical Journal Associates. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
