Treatment
Initial treatment involves stabilizing the patient enough to ensure adequate airway, breathing, and circulation, and identifying other injuries. Surgery may be needed to repair injured organs. Surgical exploration is necessary for people with penetrating injuries and signs of peritonitis or shock. Laparotomy is often performed in blunt abdominal trauma, and is urgently required if an abdominal injury causes a large, potentially deadly bleed. However, intra-abdominal injuries are also frequently successfully treated nonoperatively. The use of CT scanning allows care providers to use less surgery because they can identify injuries that can be managed conservatively and rule out other injuries that would need surgery. Depending on the injuries, a patient may or may not need intensive care.
Read more about this topic: Abdominal Trauma
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—C. John Sommerville (20th century)