Chest and Abdominal Trauma in Sport

Blunt chest trauma in sport can collapse breathing or circulation within minutes, while blunt abdominal bleeding, most often from the spleen, is frequently hidden at first and can present hours or days later.

Sport supplies the mechanisms: a knee to the flank at a ruck, a cricket ball, the end of a hockey stick, handlebars in a fall. It also supplies the culture that makes abdominal trauma dangerous, in which an athlete who has been winded stands up, says they are fine and jogs back into position.

This page covers recognition, the immediate measures and the disposition. The survey itself sits on Assessing the Collapsed Athlete, and the enlarged spleen of glandular fever, a different problem, on Infectious Mononucleosis in Athletes.