ABSTRACT
Chest trauma, whether blunt or penetrating, potentially may involve damage to the heart and great vessels with consequences that may range from simple hematoma formation to major organ disruption, hemodynamic collapse, and death. Chest trauma contributes >30% of the 150,000 trauma deaths occurring annually in the United States.1 Point-of-care portable ultrasound machines are now ubiquitous in the emergency room and intensive care unit settings. Rapid targeted cardiac ultrasound imaging2 has been repeatedly shown to confer a survival advantage in chest trauma patients, mostly by allowing rapid triage toward emergent and subsequent definitive interventions.3
