Small bowel: About 3% of the patients in the study suffered blunt injury to the small bowel. Such injury may be caused by the impact of a steering wheel. Seat belt, or direct blow crushing the small bowel against the vertebrae. Since the bowel is mobile and can slide out of the path of a knife blade. It is more frequently injured by gunshot than by stab wounds. Whether injury is due, to blunt or penetrating trauma, there may be no acute symptoms, or, more usually: