Instead of poking penetrating wounds…

A better way to approach these wounds is as follows:

• Is the patient unstable? If so, you know the penetration caused the problem and the patient belongs in the OR.
• Is there other evidence of deep injury, such as peritonitis with a penetrating abdominal wound? If so, the patient still needs to go to the OR.
• Do a legitimate local wound exploration. This entails making the hole bigger with a knife, and using surgical instruments and your eyes to find the bottom of the tract. Obviously, there are some parts of the body where this cannot be done, such as the face, but they probably don’t need this kind of workup anyway.