Intervention for Chest Trauma and Large Vessel Injury

Trauma is an injury to the body that involves multiple anatomical and pathophysiological changes caused by forces acting from outside the body. The number of patients with trauma is increasing as our society becomes more sophisticated. The importance and demand of traumatology are growing due to the development and spread of treatment and diagnostic technologies. In particular, damage to the large blood vessels of the chest can be life-threatening, and the sequelae are often severe; therefore, diagnostic and therapeutic methods are becoming increasingly important. Trauma to nonaortic vessels of the thorax and aorta results in varying degrees of physical damage depending on the mechanism of the accident and anatomical damage involved. The main damage is hemorrhage from non-aortic vessels of the thorax and aorta, accompanied by hemodynamic instability and coagulation disorders, which can be life-threatening. Immediate diagnosis and rapid therapeutic access can often improve the prognosis. The treatment of trauma can be surgical or interventional, depending on the patient’s condition. Among them, interventional procedures are increasingly gaining popularity owing to their convenience, rapidity, and high therapeutic effectiveness, with increasing use in more trauma centers worldwide. Typical interventional procedures for patients with thoracic trauma include embolization for non-aortic injuries and thoracic endovascular aortic repair for aortic injuries. These procedures have many advantages over surgical treatments, such as fewer internal or surgical side effects, and can be performed more quickly than surgical procedures, contributing to improved outcomes for patients with trauma.