According to a new study, CT and MRI scans have been increasingly used, by almost the triple since 1998, in the emergency rooms at the hospitals of the United States. However, this marked increase has not been accompanied with a corresponding improvement in the rates of detection of life-threatening injuries. The study is published in the October issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Dr. Frederick Kofi Korley, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and the lead author of the study, said "There has been a dramatic increase in the likelihood of getting a CT or MRI scan during visits to emergency departments for injury-related conditions without a corresponding increase in the likelihood of diagnosing life-threatening injuries during those visits," he added "Emergency departments in the United States are excellent at rapidly diagnosing and treating life-threatening illnesses, however, we need to better understand how to provide the same level of care in a cost-effective way," The costs of a CT scan range between $270 and $4,800 based on the organ or the region being imaged and the hospital performing the procedure. On the other hand, MRI scans cost between $400 and $3,500. Moreover, the increased number of CT scans not only represents elevated costs on healthcare system, but also includes increased exposure to radiation in emergency room.
CT and MRI, the scans and the outcome.
During the study, Dr. Korley and his team evaluated the use of CT and MRI scans in the emergency room. They reviewed data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. The data included 324,569 emergency department visits that took place between 1998 and 2007. Researchers studied a sample of 5,237 visits in 1998, 6% of them had CT or MRI scans. In 2007, 15% of sample of 6,567 patients underwent CT or MRI procedures. The researching team noted that the significant increase in scans was caused by elevation in CT scans. However, researchers said that no corresponding improvement in the clinical outcome was accompanied with the marked increase in CT and MRI scans. For instance, 1.7% o the conducted scans during 1998 resulted in detecting life-threatening conditions, such as skull or spinal fractures in head and neck. One the hand, 2% of the scanned patients in 2007 had such conditions.
