Diagnostics and treatment of closed chest injuries are the urgent problems of thoracic surgery and traumatology [1, 3-5]. Traumatic asphyxia is a complication that occurs with strong and short-term compression of a chest or an abdomen. A diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia is established on the basis of complaints, anamnesis, the mechanism of a trauma, clinical picture and instrumental studies [2, 5, 7, 8].

We present a rare occurence of traumatic asphyxia as a result of closed chest injury with compression.