Prevalence and Clinical Import of Thoracic Injury Identified by Chest Computed Tomography but Not Chest Radiography in Blunt Trauma: Multicenter Prospective Cohort Study.

Study Objective: Chest computed tomography (CT) diagnoses more injuries than chest radiography, so-called occult injuries. Wide availability of chest CT has driven substantial increase in emergency department use, although the incidence and clinical significance of chest CT findings have not been fully described. We determine the frequency, severity, and clinical import of occult injury, as determined by changes in management.

Yield and clinical predictors of thoracic spine injury from chest computed tomography for blunt trauma.

Introduction: Cost and radiation risk have prompted intense examination of trauma patient imaging. A proposed decision instrument (DI) for the use of chest computed tomography (CT), (CCT) in blunt trauma patients includes thoracic spine (TS) tenderness, altered mental status (AMS) and distracting painful injury (DPI) as potential predictor variables. TS CT is a separate, costly study whose value is currently ill-defined.