• Clin Neurol Neurosurg · Jun 2007

    Indications for brain CT scan in patients with minor head injury.

    • Masih Saboori, Jalal Ahmadi, and Zahra Farajzadegan.
    • Department of Neurosurgery, Medical School, Medical University of Isfahan, Isfahan, Iran. masih_saboori@yahoo.com
    • Clin Neurol Neurosurg. 2007 Jun 1;109(5):399-405.

    ObjectivesMinor head injury is the most common type of head injury. Despite of high incidence and numerous studies performed, there is much controversy about correct evaluation of these patients. The aim of this study was to find clinical signs and symptoms which help to predict the indications for brain CT scan following minor head injury.MethodsA series of 682 consecutive patients who had been attended at two university hospitals (Alzahra and Kashani) with minor head injury (GCS=15) were prospectively enrolled in this cohort study. In all cases clinical signs and symptoms were collected and a cranial computerized tomography (CT) scan was obtained. The relationship between the occurrence of clinical findings and appearance of intracranial posttraumatic lesions on cranial CT was analyzed by chi-square tests and statistic logistic regression methods, with 95% confidence intervals.ResultsOf 682 patients, 46 (6.7%) presented brain injuries on CT scan. All patients with abnormal CT scans had at least one of the following factors (risk factors): posttraumatic amnesia, loss of consciousness, posttraumatic seizure, headache, vomiting, focal neurological deficit, skull fracture, coagulopathy or antecedent of treatment with anticoagulants and patient age older than 60 years. No abnormal CT scans were found among patients without any of those risk factors on admission. Vomiting, skull fracture and age greater than 60 years were risk factors significantly correlated to an abnormal cranial CT after head injury. The presence of several risk factors in a patient increased the probability of posttraumatic lesion on CT scan.ConclusionSome clinical risk factors can be used as a guide to predict the probability of abnormal CT following minor head injury.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…