Photo Credit: Pornpak Khunatorn

The following is a summary of the “Morel-Lavallée lesion,” published in the January 2023 issue of Emergency Medicine by Amaravathi, et al.

Patients who have experienced trauma often present to the emergency room with a wide range of injuries. Patients with polytrauma are unlikely to have any injuries missed during the evaluation process. Instead, they present the case of a trauma patient who sustained one of these extremely unusual injuries.

In this report, we describe the case of a 67-year-old man who went to the ER claiming to have experienced trauma. His lower back, hip, and thigh were all in excruciating pain, he said. However, there was no evidence of a bone fracture on the x-ray, and an intensive sonographic examination for trauma showed no damage. 

A Morel-Lavallée lesion was detected on point-of-care ultrasound of his right thigh. Many patients with multiple injuries suffer from Morel-Lavallée lesions, post-traumatic, closed, degloving wounds. Because of the potential for serious complications, emergency physicians should be aware of this lesion.

Source: sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S073646792200573X