The liver occupies near entire right upper abdomen and is protected by the rib cage but the relatively prominent vascular supply and weak supportive tissue made more frequent incidence of severe injury for the outside blunt and penetrating
forces.
Recently automobile accidents, the industrial trauma and the subsequent hepatic injury cases have increased but in spite of the development in transport and management, the mortality rate due to liver injury has not been decreased significantly
than
that due to other diseases. The difficult problem such as prompt hemostasis and prospective complications are still unresolved. This is retrospective analysis of 164 cases of traumatic liver injuries who were treated at the department of General
Surgery, Catholic University Medical College during the last 10 years of Jan 1980 to Dec. 1989.
@ES The following results were obtained.
@EN 1) Male to female ratio was 112:52 and most frequent injured age group was infant and preschool age (0-9).
2) The nature of injury was traffic accident in 109 cases (66.5%), falling down in 12 cases (7.0%), stab wound in 23 cases (14.0%), and others in 20 cases (12.2%).
3) The most frequent injury was class II.
4) The expired cases after operation were 28 cases and overall mortality rate was 17.1%.
5) The associated injuries were 85 cases and the most common injuries were spleen rupture, and duodenum, gall bladder and small intestine injuries.
6) Surgical treatment was performed in all 164 cases the most common-procedure was suturing and next were bleeding control, liver resection, packing, vessel repainr, debridement and hepatic-artery ligation.
7) Complications were developed in 39 out of 164 cases (23.8%) and among them, pulmonary complication was most frequently seen (14.6%).
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