Computed Tomographic Scanning Evaluation Of The Patients With Head Trauma

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Head trauma is the most common cause of traumatic death between the ages 1 and 44 and especially among 15-24 year- old males. Most frequent causes of head trauma are car accidents, sports injuries, work accidents, assaults, and terrorism. When classification is based on Glasgow Coma Scale head injuries are divided into 3 groups as minimal-minor, mild and severe head traumas. The most important points in the early diagnosis, and treatment of the patient with head trauma are detailed anamnesis, physical, neurological, and radiological examination.Diagnostic evaluation of patients with head trauma has been a great problem for physicians for years. Introduction of brain CT into medical practice has created revolution in this field. Brain CT is a diagnostic tool for the evaluation of traumatic brain injuries, because it has a rapid acquisition time, it is universally available, easy to interpret, and reliable. METHODS: The cases brought to the Emergency Medicine Clinic due to head trauma and underwent brain CT in June 2015 were included in our study. The data of the patients were evaluated retrospectively. For this purpose, emergency service files, hospitalization files and records entered into the hospital automation system with ICD-10 codes were analyzed. RESULTS: A total of 353 patients with head trauma applied to our emergency department between the specified dates, and 177 of these patients had undergone brain CT. The female/male ratio of these patients was 40/64 and the most common application was in the 18-59 age group. According to the brain CT results, 89 patients did not have any pathological findings, while indicated number of patients had atrophy (n=8), intracranial hemorrhage (n=2), contusion (n=2), subdural hematoma (n=1), hydrocephalus (n=1) and chronic ischemia (n=1). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: In this study, the benefit of using online technology in interpreting tomography of patients who admitted to emergency department with head trauma and underwent brain CT during off-hours was emphasized.