IR Management of Liver and Splenic Trauma

Liver can commonly get injured in blunt abdominal injury or secondary to penetrating injury. Often mortality is related to the delay in hemostasis. The combination of CT scanning to locate the site of bleed followed by embolization can be a lifesaving procedure in both the hemodynamically stable as well as unstable patients. Spleen, on the other hand, can be sacrificed in the face of a life-threatening hemorrhage. However, recent trends favor nonoperative management, whenever there is salvageable splenic parenchyma and embolization is an important adjunctive treatment.