Fluid replacement may be required to ensure adequate blood volume, but fluids are given carefully since fluid overload can worsen pulmonary edema, which may be lethal. The severity ranges from mild to severe: small contusions may have little or no impact on health, yet pulmonary contusion is the most common type of potentially lethal chest trauma. It occurs in 30–75% of severe chest injuries. The risk of death following a pulmonary contusion is between 14 and 40%. Pulmonary contusion is usually accompanied by other injuries. Although associated injuries are often the cause of death, pulmonary contusion is thought to cause death directly in a quarter to half of cases. Children are at especially high risk for the injury because the relative flexibility of their bones prevents the chest wall from absorbing force from an impact, causing it to be transmitted instead to the lung. Pulmonary contusion is associated with complications including pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome, and it can cause long-term respiratory disability. Classification
Pulmonary contusion and laceration are injuries to the lung tissue. Pulmonary laceration, in which lung tissue is torn or cut, differs from pulmonary contusion in that the former involves disruption of the macroscopic architecture of the lung, while the latter does not. When lacerations fill with blood, the result is pulmonary hematoma, a collection of blood within the lung tissue. Contusion involves hemorrhage in the alveoli (tiny air-filled sacs responsible for absorbing oxygen), but a hematoma is a discrete clot of blood not interspersed with lung tissue.
More common in women because of post-menopausal osteoporosis. History
The Colles fracture is named after Abraham Colles (1773–1843), an Irish surgeon, from Kilkenny who first described it in 1814 by simply looking at the classic deformity before the advent of X-rays. Ernest Amory Codman was the first to study it using X-rays. His article, published in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, now known as The New England Journal of Medicine, also developed the classification system.It is sometimes said that Claude Pouteau was the first to describe the Colles fracture (which is sometimes called the Pouteau-Colles fracture), but, according to P. Liverneaux, it is not the case. See also
Smiths fracture

References
External links
00913 at CHORUSColles Fracture Wheeless Textbook