• J Emerg Med · Feb 2014

    Review Case Reports

    Are Plain Radiographs Sufficient to Exclude Cervical Spine Injuries in Low-Risk Adults?

    • Rawle A Seupaul, Benton R Hunter, Samuel M Keim, and Gene Hern.
    • Department of Emergency Medicine, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana.
    • J Emerg Med. 2014 Feb 1;46(2):257-63.

    BackgroundThe routine use of clinical decision rules and three-view plain radiography to clear the cervical spine in blunt trauma patients has been recently called into question.Clinical QuestionIn low-risk adult blunt trauma patients, can plain radiographs adequately exclude cervical spine injury when clinical prediction rules cannot?Evidence ReviewFour observational studies investigating the performance of plain radiographs in detecting cervical spine injury in low-risk adult blunt trauma patients were reviewed.ConclusionThe consistently poor performance of plain radiographs to rule out cervical spine injury in adult blunt trauma victims is concerning. Large, rigorously performed prospective trials focusing on low- or low/moderate-risk patients will be needed to truly define the utility of plain radiographs of the cervical spine in blunt trauma.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      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…