Is cranial computed tomography unnecessary in children with a head injury and isolated vomiting?
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Ola Rominiyi; Edward Snelson; David A. King; Simon Hardman
- Source
- BMJ. :l1875
- Subject
- medicine.medical_specialty
Population level
Vomiting
Traumatic brain injury
Computed tomography
030204 cardiovascular system & hematology
Pediatrics
Head trauma
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Head Injuries, Closed
medicine
Humans
030212 general & internal medicine
Child
medicine.diagnostic_test
business.industry
Head injury
General Medicine
medicine.disease
Surgery
Impaired consciousness
Radiation risk
Brain Injuries
Practice Guidelines as Topic
medicine.symptom
Tomography, X-Ray Computed
business
- Language
- ISSN
- 1756-1833
0959-8138
What you need to know Nearly 35 000 children in the United Kingdom present to emergency departments with head injuries each year.1 These are largely minor injuries with normal or minimally impaired consciousness level. Around 5% have intracranial complications with approximately 1% having clinically important traumatic brain injuries (box 1).12 Box 1 ### Definitions #### TBI-CT—Traumatic brain injury on CT2 Head injury with any of the following signs on CT: #### ci-TBI — Clinically important traumatic brain injury2 Traumatic brain injury resulting in any of the following:RETURN TO TEXT The use of cranial computed tomography (CT) scans to identify intracranial complications in children with head trauma has increased in developed countries. A third of children with head injuries presenting to emergency departments in the United States receive imaging.3 The associated radiation risk for an individual child is low, but it becomes important at a population level. For …