Post traumatic pulmonary insufficiency.

Abstract

During approximately the past 20 years a new syndrome has become the focus of interest for people who treat injured patients. It is characteristic of this syndrome that patients who have been exposed to extra-thoracic injury may succumb to pulmonary insufficiency, even though their primary injury has been properly corrected. This syndrome has been briefly mentioned in the literature before, but the first detailed description was given by Jenkins and co-workers in 1950. It was, however, the Vietnam war that provided the main impetus for research in this area. During this war the Americans took both infusion therapy and respiratory therapy to the frontlines. Many injured soldiers who would otherwise have died due to their injury, now survived the initial trauma. One then found that even if the trauma were properly corrected, many patients succumbed to pulmonary insufficiency a few days later.