Abstract
Background
About 50 cases of azygos venous system injuries following civilian trauma have been published in current literature. The purpose of our study was to investigate the incidence of these injuries, the causative mechanism and type of trauma, the co-existing injuries, and the mortality rate in our institution.
Methods
We performed a retrospective review of all trauma patients who were admitted to the surgical department of the General Hospital of Rethymno during an 11-year period. Our study included patients arriving at our institution dead or alive with an azygos venous system injury following blunt or penetrating civilian trauma.
Results
Seven patients—five men and two women—were identified with azygos venous system injuries. Five had an azygos vein laceration, one suffered from both azygos and hemiazygos vein lacerations, and the last one had sustained hemiazygos and accessory hemiazygos vein injuries. All of them suffered from a blunt trauma. Three arrived at our hospital in extremis, and all died within 24 h despite our resuscitation attempts. All of our patients were polytrauma patients. All of them had co-existing torso injuries which were severe in all but one case, three of them suffered also from serious head injuries, and all but one had at least serious extremity’s injuries.
Conclusion
Azygos venous system injuries are rare, although it seems that they are more frequent than current literature would indicate. Blunt trauma mechanism seems to be predominant in civilian trauma setting, and the patients have usually sustained a lot of serious and severe co-existing injuries with high resultant lethality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Endara SA, Davalos GA, Nuñez MF et al (2010) Azygous vein laceration secondary to blunt thoraco-abdominal trauma. Interact Cardiovasc Thorac Surg 11:342–344
Wall MJ Jr, Mattox KL, Debakey ME (2006) Injuries to the azygous venous system. J Trauma 60:357–362
O’Connor JV, Byrne C, Scalea TM et al (2009) Vascular injuries after blunt chest trauma: diagnosis and management. Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med 17:42. doi:10.1186/1757-7241-17-42
Sharma OP, Rawitscher RE (1999) Blunt vena azygos trauma: report of a case and review of world literature. J Trauma 46:192–195
Butler DA, Schneider RF, Jadali M (1995) Traumatic injury to the azygous vein: case report. J Trauma 39:761–762
Sugimoto K, Asari Y, Hirata M et al (1998) The diagnostic problem associated with blunt traumatic azygous vein injury: delayed appearance of right haemothorax after blunt chest trauma. Injury 29:380–382
Drac P, Manak P, Klein J et al (2007) Azygos vein injury in blunt chest trauma. Biomed Pap Med Fac Univ Palacky Olomouc Czech Repub 151:347–348
Nguyen LL, Gates JD (2006) Simultaneous azygous vein and aortic injury from blunt trauma: case report and review of the literature. J Trauma 61:444–446
Perkins ZB, De’Ath HD, Aylwin C et al (2012) Epidemiology and outcome of vascular trauma at a British Major Trauma Center. Eur J Vasc Endovasc Surg 44:203–209
Bowles BJ, Teruya T, Belzberg H et al (2000) Blunt traumatic azygous vein injury diagnosed by computed tomography: case report and review of the literature. J Trauma 49:776–779
Standring S (2008) Gray’s anatomy-the anatomical basis of clinical practice, 40th edn. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh, pp 939–940
Cao JG, Dai NF, Chen CZ (2012) Ruptured azygos vein caused by blunt trauma on left chest. Chin Med J 125:3355–3356
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Papadomanolakis, A., Theodoridou, E., Vogiatzis, N. et al. Injury to Azygos Venous System: A Co-Existing Injury in High-Impact Lethal Trauma. World J Surg 40, 1355–1361 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-016-3411-7
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00268-016-3411-7