Abstract

In this series of 30 consecutively operated patients, two were probably dead from their cardiac wounds on arrival at hospital and two suffered extrapericardial large vessel injury. These four patients died. Among the remaining 26 patients who arrived alive in the emergency room with intrapericardial wounds, 23 (89%) survived during the four-and-a-half years covered by this report. These included five survivors in a subgroup of six patients with serious left ventricular wounds.

The use of initial pericardiocentesis in 13, sternotomy in 10, and extracorporeal circulation in 7 of these 30 patients is emphasized.