Significance of CT Scans in Mild Head Injury Patients

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to identify a group of mild head injury patients having lesions on computerized tomography(CT) and to investigate the risk factors affecting the abnormal findings on CT scan. The study was limited to patients 16 years of age and older with a initial Glasgow Coma Scale(GCS) scores of at least 13 at the time of admission. Of a total of 243 patients studied, 156(64.2%) had abnormal CT findings. 49 patients(20.2%) required neurosurgical intervention(craniotomies for hematoma in 33, hematoma in 1 and subdural hygroma in 3). Four patients(2.4%) died of their cranial injury and three died of extracranial causes. The incidence of CT abnormalities for each GCS score was 86.7% in GCS of 13, 68.6% in GCS of 14, and 58.6% in GCS of 5. The factors affecting GCS scores at the time of admission were the presence of loss of consciousness and posttraumatic amnesia. The factors affecting abnormal CT scans were the presence of posttraumatic amnesia and skull fracture. A new lesion of extension of the initial finding on follow-up CT scans was found in 9.3% of 75 patients who underwent follow-up CT scans. Even though routine CT scans for mild head injury patients are not always necessary, these result suggest that all patients admitted to hospital after mild head injury should undergo CT scanning to enable early detection of an intracranial lesion.