Pot pouri of heuristics in penetrating trauma to the chest.

Reading the techniques of an unfamiliar operation from an operative textbook is frequently not sufficient to enable the performance of the actual operation. It is the small points - the tricks of the trade - that make the difference to the 'uninitiated'; it is the heuristics, the 'rule of thumb' that doctors frequently doing these procedures learn through trial and error. We describe some of the heuristics of emergency operative management of penetrating thoracic trauma.