Rupture of the Lung Without Fracture, Part 2

Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine
by George M. Gould, M.D., Walter L. Pyle, M.D.

(Page 16 of 42)

In the Indian Medical Gazette there is an account of a private of thirty- five, who was thrown forward and off his horse while endeavoring to mount. He fell on a lance which penetrated his chest and came out through the scapula. The horse ran for about 100 yards, the man hanging on and trying to stop him. After the extraction of the lance the patient recovered. Longmore gives an instance of complete transfixion by a lance of the right side of the chest and lung, the patient recovering. Ruddock mentions cases of penetrating wounds of both lungs with recovery.

There is a most remarkable instance of recovery after major thoracic wounds recorded by Brokaw. In a brawl, a shipping clerk received a thoracic wound extending from the 3d rib to within an inch of the navel, 13 1/2 inches long, completely severing all the muscular and cartilaginous structures, including the cartilages of the ribs from the 4th to the 9th, and wounding the pleura and lung. In addition there was an abdominal wound 6 1/2 inches long, extending from the navel to about two inches above Poupart's ligament, causing almost complete intestinal evisceration. The lung was partially collapsed. The cartilages were ligated with heavy silk, and the hemorrhage checked by ligature and by packing gauze in the inter-chondral spaces. The patient speedily recovered, and was discharged in a little over a month, the only disastrous result of his extraordinary injuries being a small ventral hernia.

In wounds of the diaphragm, particularly those from stabs and gunshot injuries, death is generally due to accompanying lesions rather than to injury. Hollerius, and Alexander Benedictus, made a favorable diagnosis of wounds made in the fleshy portions of the diaphragm, but despaired of those in the tendinous portions. Bertrand, Fabricius Hildanus, la Motte, Ravaton, Valentini, and Glandorp, record instances of recovery from wounds of the diaphragm.

There are some peculiar causes of diaphragmatic injuries on record, laughter, prolonged vomiting, excessive eating, etc., being mentioned. On the other hand, in his "Essay on Laughter (du Ris)," Joubert quotes a case in which involuntary laughter was caused by a wound of the diaphragm; the laughter mentioned in this instance was probably caused by convulsive movements of the diaphragm, due to some unknown irritation of the phrenic nerve. Bremuse gives an account of a man who literally split his diaphragm in two by the ingestion of four plates of potato soup, numerous cups of tea and milk, followed by a large dose of sodium bicarbonate to aid digestion. After this meal his stomach swelled to an enormous extent and tore the diaphragm on the right side, causing immediate death.

The diaphragm may be ruptured by external violence (a fall on the chest or abdomen), or by violent squeezing (railroad accidents, etc.), or according to Ashhurst, by spasmodic contraction of the part itself. If the injury is unaccompanied by lesion of the abdominal or thoracic viscera, the prognosis is not so unfavorable as might be supposed. Unless the laceration is extremely small, protrusion of the stomach or some other viscera into the thoracic cavity will almost invariably result, constituting the condition known as internal or diaphragmatic hernia. Pare relates the case of a Captain who was shot through the fleshy portion of the diaphragm, and though the wound was apparently healed, the patient complained of a colicky pain. Eight months afterward the patient died in a violent paroxysm of this pain. At the postmortem by Guillemeau, a man of great eminence and a pupil of Pare, a part of the colon was found in the thorax, having passed through a wound in the diaphragm. Gooch saw a similar case, but no history of the injury could be obtained. Bausch mentions a case in which the omentum, stomach, and pancreas were found in the thoracic cavity, having protruded through an extensive opening in the diaphragm. Muys, Bonnet, Blancard, Schenck, Sennert, Fantoni, and Godefroy record instances in which, after rupture of the diaphragm, the viscera have been found in the thorax; there are many modern cases on record. Internal hernia through the diaphragm is mentioned by Cooper, Bowles, Fothergill, Monro, Ballonius, Derrecagiax, and Schmidt. Sir Astley Cooper mentioned a case of hernia ventriculi from external violence, wherein the diaphragm was lacerated without any fracture of the ribs. The man was aged twenty-seven, and being an outside passenger on a coach (and also intoxicated), when it broke down he was projected some distance, striking the ground with considerable force. He died on the next day, and the diagnosis was verified at the necropsy, the opening in the diaphragm causing stricture of the bowel.

Postempski successfully treated a wound of the diaphragm complicated with a wound of the omentum, which protruded between the external opening between the 10th and 11th ribs; he enlarged the wound, forced the ribs apart, ligated and cut off part of the omentum, returned its stump to the abdomen, and finally closed both the wound in the diaphragm and the external wound with sutures. Quoted by Ashhurst, Hunter recorded a case of gunshot wound, in which, after penetrating the stomach, bowels, and diaphragm the ball lodged in the thoracic cavity, causing no difficulty in breathing until shortly before death, and even then the dyspnea was mechanical - from gaseous distention of the intestines.

Peritonitis in the thoracic cavity is a curious condition which may be brought about by a penetrating wound of the diaphragm. In 1872 Sargent communicated to the Boston Society for Medical Improvement an account of a postmortem examination of a woman of thirty-seven, in whom he had observed major injuries twenty years before. At that time, while sliding down some hay from a loft, she was impaled on the handle of a pitchfork which entered the vagina, penetrated 22 inches, and was arrested by an upper left rib, which it fractured; further penetration was possibly prevented by the woman's feet striking the floor. Happily there was no injury to the bladder, uterus, or intestines. The principal symptoms were hemorrhage from the vagina and intense pain near the fractured rib, followed by emphysema. The pitchfork-handle was withdrawn, and was afterward placed in the museum of the Society, the abrupt bloody stain, 22 inches from the rounded end, being plainly shown. During twenty years the woman could never lie on her right side or on her back, and for half of this time she spent most of the night in the sitting position. Her last illness attracted little attention because her life had been one of suffering. After death it was found that the cavity in the left side of the chest was entirely filled with abdominal viscera. The opening in the diaphragm was four inches in diameter, and through it had passed the stomach, transverse colon, a few inches of the descending colon, and a considerable portion of the small intestines. The heart was crowded to the right of the sternum and was perfectly healthy, as was also the right lung. The left lung was compressed to the size of a hand. There were marked signs of peritonitis, and in the absence of sufficient other symptoms, it could be said that this woman had died of peritonitis in the left thoracic cavity.

Extended tolerance of foreign bodies loose in the thoracic cavity has been noticed. Tulpins mentions a person who had a sponge shut up in his thoracic cavity for six weeks; it was then voided by the mouth, and the man recovered. Fabricius Hildanus relates a similar instance in which a sponge-tent was expelled by coughing. Arnot reports a case in which a piece of iron was found in a cyst in the thorax, where it had remained for fourteen years. Leach gives a case in which a bullet was impacted in the chest for forty-two years. Snyder speaks of a fragment of knife-blade which was lodged in the chest twelve years and finally coughed up.