This paper reviews the nature and the frequency of adverse events in the everyday functioning of a French trauma emergency unit, and evaluates the feasibility of their detection by the means of a daily record review. A senior surgeon identified the adverse events by reviewing the complete record with a minimal 6-months follow-up for every patient attending the emergency unit during a 10-week period. To test the reliability of this review, a blind re-review of all records corresponding to the detected adverse events, mixed with an equal number of controls, was carried out by two independent experts. The review of the 2604 records identified 210 medical adverse events, most of them occurring early in the care process. Sixty-seven per cent of the adverse events involved prevention failure, mainly for tetanus but also for thrombosis and rabies. For the other 33% it was possible to determine two situations with a high risk of adverse event: body contusions following a traffic accident and metacarpo-phalangeal thumb sprains. The re-review evaluated the positive predictive value of the initial review to be 97.5% and its negative predictive value to be 96%. It is concluded that the review of the initial record by a single senior is effective in detecting the adverse events. Prevention of two-thirds of them could be possible by the implementation and monitoring of protocols.