Since the forces that cause aortic injury are tremendous, they often cause other injuries that are more immediately life threatening. In these cases, the ER doctor may decide to treat these injuries before doing heart surgery. Whatever the decision, the doctor must continue to watch carefully for elevated blood pressure. Elevated blood pressure can sometimes cause a ruptured aorta to tear away completely, which would be fatal. Finally, any procedure that can make a patient gag and vomit, such as the use of a nasogastric tube to remove blood from the stomach, should be avoided as the straining from gagging and vomiting could further injure the torn aorta.
Emphasis has to be placed on keeping the patient as comfortable and calm as possible.
As part of this effort, the patient needs to be given enough pain-relief medicine to help keep their blood pressure down. Though often hard to detect and, sometimes, virtually invisible, traumatic aortic disruption is one of the main causes of death after a car accident or similar severe injury. May 2000 Email this article to a friend References 1. Thoracic vascular trauma. Topics in Emergency Medicine.