For patients with polytrauma, integrating whole-body computed tomography (CT) scan into early trauma care significantly increases the probability of survival, according to the results of a retrospective, multicenter study reported in the March 24 Online First issue of The Lancet.

"The number of trauma centres using whole-body CT for early assessment of primary trauma is increasing," write Stefan Huber-Wagner, from Munich University Hospital in Munich, Germany, and colleagues from the Working Group on Polytrauma of the German Trauma Society. "There is no evidence to suggest that use of whole-body CT has any effect on the outcome of patients with major trauma. We therefore compared the probability of survival in patients with blunt trauma who had whole-body CT during resuscitation with those who had not."

The investigators used the data recorded in the trauma registry of the German Trauma Society to determine survival outcomes for 4621 patients with blunt trauma who received whole-body or non–whole-body CT.

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"Integration of whole-body CT into early trauma care significantly increased the probability of survival in patients with polytrauma," the study authors write. "Whole-body CT is recommended as a standard diagnostic method during the early resuscitation phase for patients with polytrauma."

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ho hum....

okay, wake me when the anti-radiation-dose lobby arrives.

Radiologist Adds a Human Touch: Photos

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

FACES Dr. Yehonatan Turner, a radiologist, found that putting patient photos on files led to more thorough reports.

When Dr. Yehonatan N. Turner began his residency in radiology, he was frustrated that the CT scans he analyzed revealed nothing about the patients behind them — only their internal organs. So to make things personal, he imagined each patient was his father. But then he had a better idea: attach a photograph of the actual patient to each file.

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Dr. Turner was accepted to both film school and medical school, and he was drawn to radiology as the most visual field in medicine. He said his interest in the power of faces was piqued by his reading of the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. He included a quotation from Levinas in his presentation of the research to his American colleagues in Chicago: “Among all the organs of the body, the face is the one which stays most naked. ... In front of the face of the other, silence is impossible.”

why am i not surprised that this research paper, which made the news a few months ago (around early december, in time with rsna 08), originated from a guy who looks bohemian & was accepted to film school ;)

joking aside, i admire dr.turner's thought process. it's lateral thinkers like this who innovate.