May 10--A study by UC Davis Health System researchers and others of more than 40,000 kids who suffered bumps on the head revealed that the children don't always need CT scans.
The study written up for the June 2011 issue of Pediatrics shows that about half of the children taken to hospital emergency rooms for minor blunt head trauma receive a head computed tomography (CT) scan. However, true traumatic brain injury is uncommon.
"Only 2 to 3 percent of children with head trauma really have something serious going on," said Lise Nigrovic, assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, who co-authored the study with Nathan Kuppermann, professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at UC Davis.
The study noted that head CT scans present additional risks to children because of the radiation exposure. A child's growing brain tissue is more sensitive to radiation. Also, because they are expected to live a long time, the risk of a child developing a radiation-induced cancer is greater.
The study noted that allowing a period of observation reduces the use of CT scans.
"If you can be watched in the emergency department for a few hours, you may not need a CT," said Nigrovic in a UC Davis press release.
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