An investigation of lung tissue damage due to direct impact trauma

Blunt thoracic trauma is known to result in a variety of injuries, from contusion to edema. In prior we work, we have shown that the presence of the heterogeneous bronchi structures within lungs alter the strain fields within the lung, making deeper inter-bronchial tissues susceptible to an increased potential for damage. In the present work, we present a combination of computational and experimental results. Using these methods, we quantify tissue damage levels within impacted porcine lungs, applying published lung damage models to describe the expected regions that exceed suggested threshold injury. These measurements, combined with post-trauma histological investigations of the tissues are used to describe the physical damage in different regions of the lungs as a result of the trauma.