Potentialities of videothoracoscopy in diagnostics and treatment of traumatic hemothorax

: Therapeutic-diagnostic videothoracoscopy was used in complex treatment of hemothorax in 86 patients for isolated and combined stab-slash wounds and closed traumas of the chest. Thoracoscopy was not used in 321 patients with the same pathology taken as control. It was found that videothoracoscopy used for medium and big hemothorax always allowed the doctors to make the precise topical diagnosis of chest injury and due to medicinal endosurgical manipulations the thoracotomies were made 2.1 times more rarely, the duration of pleural drainage was 2.2 times shorter. Complications of the traumatic disease were 1.6 times less often, the time of in-patient treatment and lethality 1.3 times less.