-
- Marc D Succi, Brian J Yun, Sevith Rao, Sishir Rao, Ravi V Gottumukkala, McKinley Glover, Benjamin A White, Michael H Lev, Ali S Raja, and Anand M Prabhakar.
- Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA 02115, United States; Medically Engineered Solutions in Healthcare (MESH) Incubator, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit St., Boston, MA 02114, United States; Center for Research in Emergency Department Operations (CREDO), Department of Emergency Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit St., Boston, MA 02114, United States; Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, 55 Fruit St., Boston, MA 02114, United States. Electronic address: msucci@mgh.harvard.edu.
- Am J Emerg Med. 2020 Feb 1; 38 (2): 317-320.
PurposeOncologic imaging in the emergency department (ED) is frequently encountered, including non-acute scans known as "metastatic workups" or "staging" (referred to as "cancer staging computed tomography (CT) exams"). This study examines the impact of oncologic staging CT exams on ED imaging turnaround time (TAT), defined as the time from the end of the CT exam to a final signed radiologist report, as well as order to scan completion time.MethodsA retrospective review was conducted of all adult patients presenting to an urban, quaternary academic medical center ED from February 2016 to September 2017, who had CT imaging ordered, performed, and interpreted in the ED imaging department. CT exams containing institution-specific cancer descriptors were included. After excluding all acute exams, cancer staging CT exams were compared to a matched cohort of non-oncologic ED CT exams to evaluate median TAT and order to scan completion time using a log transformed multivariable linear regression.ResultsAdjusting for age and CT body part, cancer staging CT exams were associated with an independently statistically significant increased median log TAT compared to non-oncologic ED CT exams (114.5 min [IQR 112] versus 69 min [IQR 67], respectively, p < .0001) and an independently statistically significant increased median log initial order to scan completion time (166 min [IQR: 89] vs 119 min [IQR: 93], p < .0001).ConclusionOncology patients receiving non-acute metastatic workup scans in the ED have a significantly longer TAT compared to non-oncologic ED CT exams as well as longer order to scan completion times.Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Notes
Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?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:

- 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.
.