Critical Reviews™ in Biomedical Engineering

ISSN for PRINT: 0278-940X

For Online Access

Best Paper Award Selection - Editorial Board Site

2001, Volume29

Issue 2

112 pages

Issue price - $266.00

Narayan Yoganandan
Department of Neurosurgery, Medical College of Wisconsin; and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53226

Frank A. Pintar
Department of Neurosurgery, Medical College of Wisconsin; and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53226

Matthew R. Maltese
Department of Neurosurgery, Medical College of Wisconsin; and the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53226; National Transportation Biomechanics Research Center, NHTSA, Washington, DC

Although considerable efforts have been advanced to investigate the biomechanical aspects of abdominal injuries, reviews have been very limited. The purpose of this article is to present a comprehensive review of the topic. Traumatic abdominal injuries occur due to penetrating or blunt loading. However, the present review is focused on blunt trauma. Because of the complexity of the abdomen, biomechanically relevant anatomical characteristics of the various abdominal organs are presented. The proposed mechanism of injury for these organs and methods for abdominal injury quantification are described. This is followed by a detailed analysis of the biomechanical literature with particular emphasis on experiments aimed to duplicate real world injuries and attempt to quantify trauma in terms of parameters such as force, deflection, viscous criteria, pressure criteria, and correlation of these variables with the severity of abdominal injury. Experimental studies include tests using primates, pigs, rats, beagles, and human cadavers. The effects of velocity, compression, padding, and impactor characteristics on tolerance; effects of pressurization and postmortem characteristics on abdominal injury; deduction of abdominal response corridors; and force-deflection responses (of the different abdominal regions and organs) are discussed. Output of initial research is presented on the development of a device to record the biomechanical parameters in an anthropomorphic test dummy during impact. Based on these studies and the current need for abdominal protection, recommendations are given for further research.

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