[A prognostic study of 238 cases of chest trauma. Influence of the delay in admission in an intensive care unit (author's transl)].

238 cases of chest trauma were studied according to the same protocol. With this protocol we can perform on the one hand a comprehensive study of the prognosis according to the thoracic lesions and associated lesions and on the other hand a prognostic study according to the delay of admission in a intensive care unit. All our data show that the most serious lesion is the pulmonary contusion and that mortality increases if an associated lesion is present, according to its nature. On the other hand a comparison was performed between the patients directly admitted in the intensive care unit (GI) and the patients hospitalized after a delay (GII) this comparison shows that in G II patients the rate of complications was higher, the mortality more important and respiratory sequelae more frequent than for patients of GI with thoracic lesions of the same importance or less important. These data show that an early admission of chest trauma patients in an intensive care unit is desirable and that the duration of this hospitalization must be at least 3 or 6 days.