Executive Summary

US researchers have called for the routine use of chest CT in multiple trauma patients after it was revealed that up to 40% of clinically significant thoracic injuries were missed by chest X-ray. Injuries evading detection included lung contusions, lung lacerations, rib and spine factors and air or blood trapped in the space between the lung and chest wall. The researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston also found that CT was significantly more sensitive than chest X-ray in detecting aortic and other vascular injury, cardiac injury and phragmatic injury. The retrospective study, presented at the Roentgen Ray Society annual meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana, compared the sensitivity of both modalities in 563 patients.