Multidetector CT Angiography in the Evaluation of Acute Blunt Head and Neck Trauma: A Proposed Acute Craniocervical Trauma Scoring System

(RADIOLOGY) -- A proposed acute craniocervical trauma scoring system could be used as a guide to select blunt trauma patients for multidetector CT angiographic evaluation. In a retrospective study of 830 consecutive patients who presented to an emergency department with acute blunt head and neck trauma over 9 years, Delgado Almandoz and colleagues discovered that multidetector CT angiography depicted injury in 12.8% of those patients. A proposed scoring system based on independent predictors of arterial injury—cervical subluxations/dislocations, fracture lines reaching an arterial structure, and high-impact mechanisms of injury—could aid in identifying patients at highest risk of arterial injury and in selecting blunt trauma patients for multidetector CT angiographic evaluation to assess for arterial injury, the authors concluded.

To read more in this month's Radiology Journal, please visit:
http://radiology.rsna.org/content/254/1/236.abstract