Medical Encyclopedia

Aortic rupture, chest X-ray

Aortic rupture (a tear in the aorta, which is the major artery coming from the heart) can be seen on a chest X-ray.In this case, it was caused by a traumatic perforation of the thoracic aorta.This is how the X-ray appears when the chest is full of blood (right-sided hemothorax) seen here as cloudiness on the left side of the picture.