T his case report illustrates the importance of diagnostic measures of supraaortal vessels after blunt chest trauma. A high index of suspicion should be maintained in the posttraumatic period to detect injuries of carotid vessels as early as possible, especially in the anesthetized patient.Traumatic arterial dissections are relatively rare incidents. Reviewing the literature revealed only 14 cases of traumatic coronary artery dissections that have been described within the last two decades. Traumatic lesions of the carotids are more frequent. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge no case of simultaneous traumatic coronary and carotid rupture has been described until now. We report a case of a 21-year-old man suffering from both coronary dissection and carotid rupture after a frontal impact car crash.
Case HistoryA 21-year-old male automobile driver had a frontal crash against a tree. His seatbelt was not fastened at the time of crash and the airbag on the driver's side had not inflated. On arrival of the emergency physician, the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score at the scene was 12 and quickly improved to 15 ten minutes later. Except for a slight disorientation he was fully awake and showed no neurologic abnormalities. Oxygen saturation and arterial blood pressure were in the normal range throughout the emergency treatment and during the hospital transport. Mild sedation with 7 mg of midazolam was administered to reduce restlessness during transport. For volume resuscitation, a total of 1,000 mL colloids and 1,500 mL of crystalloids was infused.After 1 hour, the patient reached the emergency department having stable vital signs. Because of agitation and a presumed thoracic trauma, he was anesthetized and mechanically ventilated. While inserting a central venous line ventricular fibrillation occurred and was reconverted to sinus rhythm by a single 200-J electric shock. After this incident vasopressor treatment (0.4 mg/h of norepinephrine) was needed for circulatory stabilization. The thoracic computed tomography (CT) scan exhibited a bilateral lung contusion and a mediastinal hematoma. A right-sided pneumothorax was subsequently drained by a thoracic tube. The cranial CT showed minimal frontal contusions and a left ocular injury consisting of glass-splinter impact, retro bulb hematoma, and orbital fracture. The abdominal scan displayed no pathologic finding. Because of the eyeball lesion, he was brought to our university hospital by helicopter 8 hours after the crash for ophthalmologic treatment.The electrocardiogram at admission in the emergency room showed ST segment-elevations in V 3 to V 5 and a loss of the R-wave in V 2 to V 6 ( Fig. 1). At this time, the myocardial isoenzyme of creatinine kinase (CK-MB) was already elevated to 97.7 U/L with a total creatinine kinase (CK) of 768 U/L. Troponin I was raised to 7.65 ng/mL. Transthoracic echocardiography revealed both an anteroseptal hypokinesia and a septal akinesia. Coronary angiography showed an occlusive dissection of the proximal left anterior descending a...