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The Role of Current Emergency Radiology Practice: A prospective Cross-sectional Study Done at Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital
Teka, A.; Kebede, T. & Hawaz, Y.
Abstract
Background:
The role of radiogy in the management of emergency patients is tremendous. Which imaging modality best evaluates specific clinical emergencies has evolved and continues to advance
with clinical practice trends. The purpose of this study was to show the role of radiology in emergency patient handeling and compare specific clinical entities with the standard.
Methods:
A prospective cross sectional study was done to describe the pattern of duty hour emergency utilization at Tikur Anbessa Hospital Department of Radiology. A total of 384 patient’s
data were collected for the period of Jananuary 1st to April 30th 2010. The data which were
demographic variables, clinical diagnosis, radiologic diagnosis, type of investigation used, type of
anatomic area imaged, whether primary investigation used or not, recommendations made by the
radiology residents were collected and tabulated.
Results:
There were 242 (63%) males and 142 (37%) females. Suspected fracture was the
commonest clinical indication for referring patients to the department of radiology at the duty
hours and accounted for 40.9% of all cases. Other clinical diagnoses included pnumonia (21.6%),
blunt abdominal trauma (5.7%) and pulmonary edema (4.7%). Plain radiographs were taken in
88% of patients sent for imaging. Among the sonographic studies done, 43.4% were for patients
presenting with blunt abdominal trauma. Of all patients in 90.4% primary investigative modalities
were used. Comparison of clinical and radiologic diagnosis was made in most common clinical
cases and in general 51.3% of radiologic interpretations were normal.
Conclusion:
Plain radiography was used as the cornerstone investigative modality for emergency
imaging. Fracture and pneumonia constituted the commonest indications for emergency imaging
in all age groups. Over half of radiologic investigations were normal. It was observed that lack of
appropriate investigative modalities such as CT scan, doppler and high frequency ultrasonography
greatly affected the quality of service the department offered and also negatively affected the
training process.
Keywords
Emergency; Radiology; Practice
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