Background: Trauma is a leading cause of mortality globally. Thoracic trauma is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in both children and adult.
Objective: To compare between children and adult after exposure to a blunt chest trauma according to incidence, mechanism of injury, effect of trauma on lung, pleura and ribs and in hospital mortality rate.
Patients and methods: A prospective, comparative study included patients with blunt chest trauma attending to the Emergency Department, Menoufia University during the period from November 2019 to April 2020.
Results: The outcomes of the study were in the form of incidence, mechanisms of injury, effect of trauma on lung, pleura and ribs and hospital mortality rate in adult and children. There was difference in incidence in studied groups as adult has higher incidence, according to mechanism of injury, motor traffic accident was the main cause of trauma in both groups. Pulmonary contusion was the most common chest injury in both groups but more in children (71%) than in adult (66.7%), chest wall fracture was more in adult (33.3%) than in children (7.1%) and pneumothorax was more in adult (27.3%) than in children (7.1%) exactly as hemothorax. Mortality was observed mainly in adult group (36.4%), while it was (21.4%) in pediatric group.
Conclusion: There were differences between children and adult exposed to blunt chest trauma in incidence, effect of trauma on lung, pleura and ribs, and in mortality