Trauma of the bowel or mesentery becomes a relative rare type of the blunt abdominal injury, but with a serious prognosis. Undetected intestinal injury leads to the peritonitis, undetected mesenterial injury to the massive bleeding into the peritoneal cavity or intestinal ischemia. The intestinal or mesenterial injury was found in eleven patients admitted to the computed tomography during the period of thirty-six months. Examinations performed with two-detector-row computed tomography (three patients) or sixteen-detector-row computed tomography (eight patients), intravenous application of contrast agent was used in all procedures. Six injuries involved the bowel and all four mesenterial injuries were detected in the early posttraumatic interval, only one perforation of the terminal ileum remained undepicted and was discovered by follow-up examination five days later. The most important sign of the bowel trauma becomes the free peritoneal fluid and air collection combined with intestinal mural swelling (specificity 100%), the leakage of the intravenous contrast material (specificity 100%) in cases of mesenterial injury respectively.

        Key words: trauma – intestinal injury – mesenterial injury – computed tomography