Diaphragmatic Injuries among Severely Injured Patients (ISS ≥ 16)—An Indicator of Injury Pattern and Severity of Abdominal Trauma

Background and Objectives: Abdominal trauma among severely injured patients with an injury severity score (ISS) of 16 and above can lead to potentially life-threatening injuries that might need immediate surgical intervention. Traumatic injuries to the diaphragm (TID) are a challenging condition often accompanied by other injuries in the thoracoabdominal region. Materials and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the occurrence and clinical course of TID among severely injured patients treated at our center between 2008 and 2019 and compared them to other groups of severely injured patients without TID. Results: Thirty-five patients with TID and a median ISS of 41 were treated in the period mentioned above. They were predominantly middle-aged men and mostly victims of blunt trauma as a consequence of motor vehicle accidents. A total of 70.6% had left-sided TID, and in 69.6%, the size of defect was larger than 10 cm. The diagnosis was made with computed tomography (CT) in 68.6% of the cases, while in 25.8%, it was made intraoperatively or delayed by a false-negative initial CT scan, and in 5.7%, an intraoperative diagnosis was made without preoperative CT imaging. Surgical repair was mostly conducted via laparotomy, performing a direct closure with continuous suture. A comparison to 191 patients that required laparotomy for abdominal injuries other than TID revealed significantly higher rates of concomitant injuries to several abdominal organs among patients suffering from TID. Compared to all other severely injured patients treated in the same period (n = 1377), patients suffering from TID had a significantly higher median ISS and a longer mean duration of hospital stay. Conclusions: Our findings show that TID can be seen as an indicator of particularly severe thoracoabdominal trauma that requires increased attention from the treatment team so as not to miss relevant concomitant injuries that require immediate intervention.