Trauma cardíaco fatal na cidade de Manaus – Amazonas, Brasil

Abstract

JUSTIFICATION: Few studies comment on how fatal heart injuries are implicated in the causes of death and its relation to death mechanisms, such as cardiac exsanguination and tamponade. OBJECTIVES: (1) To verify the frequency of fatal cardiac trauma in the city of Manaus, Amazon, Brazil, between November 2015 and October 2016; (2) to clarify the mechanisms of trauma and death in addition to cases which have or have not received prior hospital treatment, as well as the injuries associated with cardiac trauma. METHODS: This is a retrospective, observational, cross-sectional study which reviewed the necropsy reports of individuals whose causa mortis was cardiac trauma admitted to the city’s Medico-legal Institute (IML) between November 2015 and October 2016, whose death cause was cardiac trauma. RESULTS: During the study period, of the 2,330 necropsies performed at the IML, 138 deaths were caused by cardiac trauma, corresponding to index of 5.98%. Males accounted for 92% of these cases, whereas females corresponded to 8% of them. Median age was 27 years for men and 30 years for women. Regarding the mechanisms of injury used, gunshots accounted for 62.3% and stab wounds for 29.7%. With respect to injury morphology, 47.8 and 42% of the individuals presented perforating and transfixing lesions, respectively. Causa mortis was cardiac exsanguination in 81.9% of cases and cardiac tamponade in 29%. On-site death was described in 86.2% of the cases, and the median time between trauma and death was 50 minutes. The ventricles were the most common site of cardiac injury. Single lesions were observed in 43.5% of the cases, whereas multiple lesions were found in 20.3%. Hemothorax was identified in 90.6% of the individuals. Only 23 (16.7%) of the patients were taken to the Emergency Room (ER); Of these, six (26.2%) were not submitted to thoracotomy for the treatment of the lesions, being the diagnosis made post mortem in the IML. Of the 300 associated injuries, the lung was affected unilaterally in 57% of the cases and bilaterally in 43% of them. CONCLUSIONS: The fatal cardiac trauma represents an index of 5.98% in the city of Manaus. Most patients die on site, usually due to exsanguination, with puncture and transfixing lesions caused by firearms, and especially in cases of on-site death, with lung injury and associated hemothorax. About a quarter of patients who reach the emergency room are not diagnosed with cardiac trauma to justify a thoracotomy.