[Pancreatic and duodenal injuries. Considerations on 40 observed cases]

Traumatic lesions of the pancreas and duodenum are uncommon. The anatomic situation of the viscera makes early diagnosis of such lesions difficult to be achieved; this fact, together with the high incidence of associated lesions, justify the high morbidity and mortality of duodeno-pancreatic traumas. In the present paper we report the two-decades experience (40 traumatic lesions of the pancreas and/or the duodenum) of the Department of Emergency Surgery, University of Milan. The overall mortality (32.5%), even if correlated with the importance of the duodeno-pancreatic lesions, was strictly dependent to the presence of associated injuries which lead to most of the morbidity and mortality.