Pneumothorax

Road traffic accidents (RTA) remain the most common cause of injuries accounting for 57 - 70% of chest trauma patient. Between 20 - 46% of deaths in poly-traumatic patients are due to chest injury (1, 2) .
Pneumothorax is a common complication of blunt chest trauma.(3) Rate of occurrence of tension pneumothorax is 10% while traumatic pneumothorax, iatrogenic pneumothorax and delayed pneumothorax occur in 33.6%, 18.1% and 12% traumatic population, respectively (3) .
Mechanism of chest trauma including blunt trauma (which is the commonest) and penetrating trauma such as stabbing (4). 90% of thoracic injuries due to blunt trauma & 70 to 85% of penetrating can be managed conservatively without surgery (5).
In order to keep the prognosis of patients with chest trauma relatively good, the patient should be diagnosed rapidly & managed adequately either conservatively or surgically (6). So that information from different diagnostic tools has a major role in improving the patient prognosis (7, 8).
Although this CT is neither practical nor feasible because it usually require transfer of the patient from the emergency room (ER) where its resuscitation equipment’s and facilities to the CT place which carry a great risk on patient survival (9). Although chest X-ray (CXR) is the first line diagnostic method for chest trauma in ER, CXR can diagnose only a sever pneumothorax or large haemothorax (10) . But lung contusion, small pneumothorax or small to moderate haemothorax may be