[Blunt abdominal trauma and injuries of the great omentum (author's transl)]

A 81 years old man died four weeks after a traffic accident with blunt abdominal trauma. The cause of death was a mechanical ileus as a result of an incarceration of a loop of the small intestines in a rent of the great omentum. Since no criteria for a traumatic tear of the greaten omentum was found the developmental mechanism of a fissure in the great omentum was explained as an exaggerated process of aging.