Prediction of Blunt Traumatic Injury in High-acuity Patients: Bedside Examination Vs Computed Tomography

Objective: The addition of spiral computed tomography (SCT) to bedside assessment in patients with major trauma may improve detection of significant injury. We hypothesized that in high-acuity trauma patients, emergency physicians' ability to detect significant injuries based solely on bedside assessment would lack the sensitivity needed to exclude serious injuries when compared with SCT.

Methods: This was a prospective single-cohort study of high-acuity trauma patients routinely undergoing whole-body SCT at a level 1 trauma center from January to September 2006. Before SCT, emergency physicians assigned ratings for likelihood of injury to 5 body regions on the basis of bedside assessment. These ratings were compared with final SCT interpretations.

Results: We enrolled 400 patients as a convenience sample; 71 were excluded. When a "very low" rating was considered negative and "low," "intermediate," "high," and "very high" were considered positive, emergency physicians were able to detect head, cervical spine, chest, abdominal/pelvic, and thoracic/lumbar spine injuries with sensitivities (95% confidence interval) of 100% (98.6%-100%), 97.4% (94.9%-98.8%), 96.9% (94.2%-98.4%), 97.9% (95.5%-99.1%), and 97.0% (94.3%-98.5%), respectively. For overall diagnostic accuracy, areas under the receiver operating characteristics curve (95% confidence interval) were 0.87 (0.82-0.92), 0.71 (0.62-0.81), 0.81 (0.76-0.86), 0.77(0.71-0.83), 0.74 (0.65-0.84), respectively.

Conclusions: Bedside assessment by emergency physicians before SCT was sensitive in ruling out serious injuries in high-acuity trauma patients with a "very low" rating for injury. However, overall diagnostic accuracy was low, suggesting that SCT should be considered in most high-acuity patients to prevent missing injuries.