Pulmonary contusion. Evaluation and classification by computed tomography.

In thoracic trauma, as in all of medicine, diagnosis precedes therapy. Over the past 5 years, we have liberally used chest CT examinations to improve diagnosis in the severely injured patient. This approach has significantly increased our diagnostic yield and permitted early diagnosis and treatment of unsuspected injuries. Confidence in our method of quantitation has helped us to assess the severity of pulmonary parenchymal injuries. Correlation of the CT findings with histologic study has changed our concept of pulmonary contusion from that of interstitial disease to that of pulmonary laceration with blood pneumonia.