Genitourinary trauma: a pictorial essay

Abstract

Genitourinary trauma is often overlooked in the setting of acute trauma. Usually other more life-threatening injuries take precedence for immediate management. When the patient is stabilized, radiologic imaging often plays a key role in diagnosing insults to the upper and lower genitourinary tract in the setting of trauma. Our aim is to provide a pictorial assay of imaging findings in upper and lower tract genitourinary trauma from a variety of mechanisms including blunt trauma, penetrating trauma, and iatrogenic trauma. A patient archiving and communication system will be used to review imaging studies of patients at our institution with genitourinary tract trauma. Cases of renal, ureteral, bladder, urethral, penile, and scrotal trauma will be considered for inclusion in our study. Multimodality imaging techniques will be reviewed. The imaging and pertinent findings that occur in various types of genitourinary trauma are outlined. Genitourinary trauma is often missed in the frenzy of acute trauma. It is important to have a high suspicion for injury especially in severe trauma, and in particular clinical settings. Although often not life threatening, recognizing the diagnostic imaging findings quickly is the realm of the astute radiologist so appropriate urologic management can be made.