Mobile CT inside trauma bay no faster than the scanner next door

In theory, having a mobile CT scanner available in a trauma resuscitation bay should save workup time over relying on a scanner near but not inside the bay. In reality, it doesn’t make a meaningful difference.

So found Danish researchers when they tried and compared both approaches. Their study report posted online June 20 in Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica.

Sandra Wulffeld, MD, and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen looked at the cases of 784 trauma patients admitted to their affiliated inpatient center in the one year before a refurbishment of the trauma room. They compared these with 742 cases of patients who were admitted in the one year following.

In the before period, clinicians had access to one CT scanner in a room adjacent to the trauma department. After the rebuild, two trauma bays each got a mobile CT scanner of its own. The mobile setup combined a moving gantry with a resuscitation table, according to the study report.

Performing subgroup analyses on severely injured and patients with traumatic brain injury, the researchers found a minor—but likely unexpected—increase in time to CT in the after period (20 minutes vs. 21 minutes).

There was a higher proportion of severe injuries, traumatic brain injury and penetrating trauma in the after period, skewing the case mixes, so the team analyzed and adjusted for differences in case mix and with time to CT as outcome.

Still they no significant difference in time to CT.

“We found no reduction in time to CT scan,” they write, “when comparing a period with mobile CT scanners incorporated in the resuscitation bay to an earlier period with a CT scanner next to the trauma room.”