Tuesday, December 2 | 10:00 a.m.-10:10 a.m. | T3-SSER01-4 | Room N228
The use of CT angiography (CTA) in cervical spine fracture patients is increasing, and this heightened use comes with significant variability of protocols, according to research to be presented Tuesday morning.
The findings underscore a need to develop more targeted protocols in the acute management of such patients, wrote a team led by presenter Rahul Jayaram of Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, CT.
Assessing patients in the emergency department for blunt cerebrovascular injury in cervical spine trauma has become more and more common in the U.S., and many trauma centers use CTA to evaluate these injuries. But there are concerns about overuse of the exam, Jayaram and colleagues explained.
Jayaram’s group conducted a study that included data from 157,533 patients who presented to the ED with cervical fractures between 2010 and 2022; of these, 21,200 (15.5%) underwent CTA.
The team found that between 2010 and 2022, the percentage of CTA exams increased from 6.1% to 24.3% (p < 0.001). Predictors of a patient undergoing CTA included younger age, male sex, higher Elixhauser Comorbidity Index (ECI) score, type of insurance, geographic area, and location of the injury.
“[Our] study identified multiple independent clinical, non-clinical, and anatomic predictors of CTA use,” the group concluded.
Be sure to attend this session for more details.