A 61-year-old woman was stepping from one boat to another when she slipped and fell onto a flagpole. The pole entered the back part of the left side of her chest, crossed the crowded space at the center of her chest, and ended in her right lung. When she reached a trauma center two hours later, she was awake, fully oriented, and stable.
Thoracic surgeons at University Hospital Zurich describe the case in the September 2026 issue of the International Journal of Surgery Case Reports, in a report titled "A Swiss flag through the chest." To their knowledge, a flagpole impalement that crossed both lungs and the center of the chest without major lasting harm had not been described before in the indexed medical literature.
