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The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement

The study analyzes the correlation between the indications and results of head CT examinations in search of evidence of the excessive use of this diagnostic method. In total, 1160 referrals for urgent head CT were analyzed retrospectively, including the following parameters: patients’ sex and age, t...

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Autores principales: Rosół, Izabela, Ciesielka, Jakub, Matlakiewicz, Magdalena, Grześków, Michał, Cebula, Maciej, Gruszczyńska, Katarzyna, Winder, Mateusz
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9610557/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36295628
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina58101468
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author Rosół, Izabela
Ciesielka, Jakub
Matlakiewicz, Magdalena
Grześków, Michał
Cebula, Maciej
Gruszczyńska, Katarzyna
Winder, Mateusz
author_facet Rosół, Izabela
Ciesielka, Jakub
Matlakiewicz, Magdalena
Grześków, Michał
Cebula, Maciej
Gruszczyńska, Katarzyna
Winder, Mateusz
author_sort Rosół, Izabela
collection PubMed
description The study analyzes the correlation between the indications and results of head CT examinations in search of evidence of the excessive use of this diagnostic method. In total, 1160 referrals for urgent head CT were analyzed retrospectively, including the following parameters: patients’ sex and age, type of scan (C−, C+, angio-CT), description of symptoms and presence of diagnostic target. Pathologies identified by the radiologist were assigned to four classes, regarding the severity of diagnosed conditions. The analysis of the CT results has shown that over half (55.22%) of the examinations revealed no deviations or showed chronic, asymptomatic lesions. As many as 73.71% referrals constituted group 0 in terms of the lack of a diagnostic target of a specific pathology. The presence of specific clinical targeting in a referral correlated significantly with a higher frequency of acute diagnosis. Contrast-enhanced follow-up examinations allowed the unequivocal classification of patients into extreme classes (I or IV) and accurate identification of patients requiring urgent or chronic treatment. Excessive use of diagnostic imaging is harmful, not only to patients, who often are unnecessarily exposed to radiation, but also to the quality of healthcare, since it increases the costs and radiologists’ workload.
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spelling pubmed-96105572022-10-28 The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement Rosół, Izabela Ciesielka, Jakub Matlakiewicz, Magdalena Grześków, Michał Cebula, Maciej Gruszczyńska, Katarzyna Winder, Mateusz Medicina (Kaunas) Article The study analyzes the correlation between the indications and results of head CT examinations in search of evidence of the excessive use of this diagnostic method. In total, 1160 referrals for urgent head CT were analyzed retrospectively, including the following parameters: patients’ sex and age, type of scan (C−, C+, angio-CT), description of symptoms and presence of diagnostic target. Pathologies identified by the radiologist were assigned to four classes, regarding the severity of diagnosed conditions. The analysis of the CT results has shown that over half (55.22%) of the examinations revealed no deviations or showed chronic, asymptomatic lesions. As many as 73.71% referrals constituted group 0 in terms of the lack of a diagnostic target of a specific pathology. The presence of specific clinical targeting in a referral correlated significantly with a higher frequency of acute diagnosis. Contrast-enhanced follow-up examinations allowed the unequivocal classification of patients into extreme classes (I or IV) and accurate identification of patients requiring urgent or chronic treatment. Excessive use of diagnostic imaging is harmful, not only to patients, who often are unnecessarily exposed to radiation, but also to the quality of healthcare, since it increases the costs and radiologists’ workload. MDPI 2022-10-16 /pmc/articles/PMC9610557/ /pubmed/36295628 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina58101468 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Rosół, Izabela
Ciesielka, Jakub
Matlakiewicz, Magdalena
Grześków, Michał
Cebula, Maciej
Gruszczyńska, Katarzyna
Winder, Mateusz
The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement
title The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement
title_full The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement
title_fullStr The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement
title_full_unstemmed The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement
title_short The Assessment of the Rationale for Urgent Head CT—Comparative Analysis of Referrals and Results of Examinations without and with Contrast Enhancement
title_sort assessment of the rationale for urgent head ct—comparative analysis of referrals and results of examinations without and with contrast enhancement
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9610557/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36295628
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/medicina58101468
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