CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study
A prospective cluster-randomized trial to implement the Canadian CT Head Rule in emergency departments.
The Canadian CT Head Rule was developed to allow physicians to be more selective when ordering computed tomography (CT) imaging for patients with minor head injury. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing this validated decision rule at multiple emergency departments. ⋯ Our knowledge-translation-based trial of the Canadian CT Head Rule did not reduce rates of CT imaging in Canadian emergency departments. Future studies should identify strategies to deal with barriers to implementation of this decision rule and explore more effective approaches to knowledge translation. (ClinicalTrials.gov trial register no. NCT00993252).