Guidelines Can Reduce Head-Injury Scans

Using guidelines can reduce unnecessary brain scans in children with head injuries, a study finds. The study included 42,000 children. All came to hospital emergency rooms with head injuries. Researchers looked at medical records for the first 22 months of the study. They used them to make guidelines to predict which children do not have an important brain injury. The guidelines include a child’s mental state, behavior, evidence of injury and other factors. Researchers then tested their guidelines. They did this by comparing them to head injury cases from the next three months. The guidelines correctly predicted which children did not have an important brain injury. They were correct for all children under 2 and nearly all of the others. Many children in these low-risk groups had computed tomography (CT) scans. But they didn’t need the scans, researchers said.