• Am. J. Surg. · Feb 2008

    Cervical spine fractures in geriatric blunt trauma patients with low-energy mechanism: are clinical predictors adequate?

    • Sherwin P Schrag, Lori J Toedter, and Nathaniel McQuay.
    • Division of Trauma/Surgical Critical Care, St. Luke's Hospital and University of Pennsylvania Trauma Network, 801 Ostrum St., Bethlehem, PA 18015, USA.
    • Am. J. Surg. 2008 Feb 1;195(2):170-3.

    BackgroundStudies have identified clinical predictors to guide radiologic evaluation of the cervical spine in geriatric patients. We hypothesized that clinical predictors are not adequate in the identification of cervical spine fractures in geriatric blunt trauma patients with low-energy mechanism.MethodsA retrospective case-control study was performed on geriatric blunt trauma patients sustaining low-energy trauma from January 2000 to January 2006. A data form including 8 clinical predictors was completed for each group.ResultsThere were 35 study and 64 control patients identified. Both groups were similar in age (study 83.6 vs control 81.2) and injury severity score (study 9.06 vs control 9.61). Only neck tenderness exceeded the expected occurrence in the presence of a cervical spine injury (chi(2) = 18.1, P = .001) in just 45.5% of the study group.ConclusionsClinical predictors appear inadequate for the evaluation of the cervical spine in geriatric trauma patients with low-energy mechanism.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…