title: Impalement injuries of the chest.
abstract: Impalement injuries of the chest are uncommon in civilian practice with few reports in the literature. We report three cases of thoracic impalement seen over a 5 year period with unusual underlying mechanisms. In two of the cases, the impalement was obvious; in the third, the impalement was concealed having occurred 5 months earlier. In Case 1, the underlying mechanism was a high-speed road traffic accident. The patient was impaled by a metallic square pipe piled by the roadside. In Case 2, the gun-housing of a locally-made rifle gave way as it was fired and allowed a reverse ejection of the barrel during recoil that impaled the hunter's chest. In Case 3, a domestic assault with an old umbrella caused an impalement injury as one of the umbrella spokes broke off, penetrated and lodged in the left chest going unnoticed for 5 months. Persistent chest pain and haemoptysis led to a request for chest radiographic examination upon which the foreign body was discovered. Massive haemoptysis brought the patient to emergency thoracotomy. All three patients underwent thoracotomy with a successful outcome.
authors.affiliation: The National Cardiothoracic Centre, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, P O Box KB 77, Korle Bu, Accra.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Edwin
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tettey
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sereboe
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Aniteye
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kotei
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tamatey
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Entsuamensah
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Delia
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Frimpong-Boateng