Advances in experimental studies of blast-induced primary injury

The primary blast injury of a living body occurs as a direct effect of changes in ambient pressure caused bya blast wave. The development of bio-shock tubes and other blast generators has given an enormous impetus to theexperimental researches of the primary blast injury in the laboratory. Various animals, isolated organs, as well as culturedcells were exposed to blast waves, so that a large body of experimental results of primary blast injury were obtained. Thepresent review first briefly describes the basic physics of blast waves, and then addresses the bio-shock tubes and theapproaches to experimental studies on the primary blast injury.