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This accumulation of blood can grow large enough to compress the lung and push away other structures in the chest, thus causing a mediastinal shift. [6] On a chest x-ray, a hemothorax can appear similarly to a pleural effusion with blunting of the pleural recess and white out of normal lung zones. [ 7 ]
This happens as a result of the narrowed coronary arteries being always maximally dilated to compensate for the decreased upstream blood supply. Thus, dilating the resistance vessels in the coronary circulation causes blood to be shunted away from the coronary vessels supplying the ischemic zones, creating more ischemia.
The lung collapses, impairing normal breathing. Surrounding structures may also shift. When severe enough to cause these shifts and hypotension, it is called a tension pneumothorax. This is life-threatening. The increased pressure inside the chest can compress the heart and lead to a collapse of the blood vessels that drain to the heart.
Hyperdynamic circulation is abnormally increased circulatory volume. Systemic vasodilation and the associated decrease in peripheral vascular resistance results in decreased pulmonary capillary wedge pressure and decreased blood pressure, presenting usually with a collapsing pulse, but sometimes a bounding pulse.
Following the traumatic event, the heart ceases to pump blood through the body. Unlike medical cardiac arrest, there are several potentially reversible causes that may result in cardiac arrest in the setting of trauma. Clinicians will rapidly assess for these causes, and interventions will be directed to the specific cause. [4]
Thus traumatic aortic rupture is a common killer in automotive accidents and other traumas, [1] with up to 18% of deaths that occur in automobile collisions being related to the injury. [2] In fact, aortic disruption due to blunt chest trauma is the second leading cause of injury death behind traumatic brain injury .
Following heart surgery, the amount of chest tube drainage is monitored. If the drainage volume drops off, and the blood pressure goes down, this can suggest a tamponade due to chest tube clogging. In that case, the person is taken back to the operating room for an emergency reoperation. [citation needed]
It can occur after damage to the central nervous system, such as spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury. Low blood pressure occurs due to decreased systemic vascular resistance resulting from loss of sympathetic tone, which in turn causes blood pooling within the extremities rather