Anatomy Yr-1
Followup cases

thorax
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The reason our patient’s heart is pushed to the left is because the pneumothorax is large enough to exert pressure (light blue arrows), a condition called a ‘tension’ pneumothorax. This can have very severe effects on the patient if the pressure is high enough to interfere with the ability of blood to return to the heart. There is also a very flat contour at the bottom of the left lung (dark blue), an air-fluid level. This tells us that there is also some sort of fluid in the pleural space on the left, along with the air. This is most likely blood (red).

thorax