• Patient involved in a significant motor vehicle accident with acceleration-deceleration forces who develops neck pain and chest pain with bruising over the sternum and a widened mediastinum (almost always associated with aortic dissection or aortic injury), most consistent with blunt thoracic aortic injury leading to incomplete aortic rupture
• Key idea: Involves the thoracic aorta because the aortic isthmus is tethered by the ligamentum arteriosum and is therefore not freely mobile and is prone to developing severe stretching/shearing forces in the setting of an acceleration-deceleration injury
• https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra0706159

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