• Godwill Abiala, Mélanie Bérubé, Éric Mercier, Natalie Yanchar, H Thomas Stelfox, Patrick Archambault, Gilles Bourgeois, Amina Belcaid, Xavier Neveu, Chartelin J Isaac, Julien Clément, François Lamontagne, and Lynne Moore.
• Population Health and Optimal Health Practices Research Unit, Trauma, Emergency, Critical Care Medicine, Centre de Recherche du CHU de Québec, Laval University (Hôpital de l'Enfant-Jésus), Laval University, Québec, Québec, Canada.
• Acad Emerg Med. 2022 Sep 1; 29 (9): 108410951084-1095.

BackgroundMultiple clinical practice guidelines recommend minimizing radiation in trauma patients but there is a knowledge gap on the importance of this problem for trauma transfers. We aimed to estimate the incidence of pretransfer and repeat posttransfer computed tomography (CT) overall and in patients with an indication for immediate transfer, to assess interhospital practice variation, to identify predictors, and to quantify the influence of pretransfer CT on time to transfer. Methods We conducted a retrospective multicenter cohort study on patients transferred to major trauma centers from 2013 to 2019. Multilevel generalized linear regression was used to generate intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to assess interhospital variation, multilevel logistic regression to generate odds ratios for each predictor, and geometric mean ratios to quantify the influence of CT on time to transfer. Results Of 18,244 patients included, 8501 (47%) had a pretransfer CT and one-quarter (26%) had a repeat posttransfer CT. Interhospital variation was moderate for pretransfer CT (5%-66%, ICC 12.5%) and for repeat posttransfer CT (7%-44%, ICC 14.7%). Pretransfer imaging was more frequent in elders and in males and repeat posttransfer imaging decreased over the study period but was more frequent in patients transferred in from Level III/IV centers than nondesignated hospitals. Time to transfer was doubled in patients who had a pretransfer CT.ConclusionsResults suggest that pretransfer CT and repeat posttransfer CT are frequent and are subject to significant practice variation. In addition, pretransfer CT is associated with increased times to transfer though additional studies are needed to demonstrate causation. These results highlight potential opportunities to reduce low-value imaging for trauma transfers.© 2022 Society for Academic Emergency Medicine.

15 keywords...

hide…