Cardiac contusion.

During a consecutive period of 24 months, 244 patients with a major trauma were admitted to the Intensive Care Unit. From this pool of patients 60 consecutively were selected who did fulfill the selected criteria. We intended to determine within this studygroup the incidence, clinical features and outcome of patients with myocardial contusion (MC). We could conclude that no currently used diagnostic test may be seen as an accurate prediction of patients who still develop morbidity or mortality from cardiac contusion. Data from the literature suggest that at present only radionuclide angiography, direct hemodynamic measurement with construction of a Starling curve, and/or 2D-echocardiography may be useful in the identification of the patients at the greatest risk and predictive of the severity of the myocardial injury.