A Challenging Penetrating Trauma Case

•This is a noteworthy case involving a combination of life-threatening injury with a superimposed iatrogenic injury.•The case will be of interest to physicians and clinicians in prehospital medicine as well as those in low-volume emergency departments or facilities where major trauma may present infrequently.•The prehospital management of chest drains is discussed.

We present the prehospital management of a 23-year-old Australian Aboriginal man with an isolated knife stab wound to the posterior right chest. The lead author attended to the prehospital management of this young man during tenure as a registrar in retrieval medicine for CareFlight Medical Services (CMS) in North Queensland, Australia. The case is noteworthy because it involved a combination of a life-threatening injury with a superimposed iatrogenic injury. The case will be of interest to physicians and clinicians in prehospital medicine as well as those in low-volume emergency departments or facilities in which major trauma may present infrequently.