ABSTRACT
The measurement of the optic nerve sheath by ocular ultrasonography might be an indirect method to assess the quickly increase of the intracranial pressure in patients with moderate trauma brain injury, taking into account that an important proportion of these could develop the increase of the intracranial pressure in a hospital-acquired way. Therefore noninvasive, reliable, and convenient techniques are needed making the ocular ultrasonography a useful tool, due to the invasive monitoring elements' problems and the poor access to measure the intracranial pressure in emergency services. In spite of the limitations and few studies that exist to consider it as a possible early detection, this technique could work as a noninvasive one in the case that could not be possible to do invasive monitoring or when it is not recommended.
ABSTRACT
Pneumothorax is the entry of air into the virtual space between the visceral and the parietal pleurae, which can occur spontaneously or to a greater extent in a traumatic way. In daily clinical practice it is frequent to find injuries that generate traumatic pneumothorax that is ipsilateral to the lesion. However, there are case reports of contralateral pneumothorax that occurred in procedures such as insertion of pacemakers, or in cases of pneumonectomy. The following is the case report of a 37-year-old man who was admitted with a sharp wound to the right paravertebral region who developed a left haemopneumothorax due to a tangential course of the injuring agent. Adequate clinical judgment was followed, and several imaging studies were carried out, leading to the diagnosis of traumatic pneumothorax that was contralateral to the described injury.