Emergency radiology
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Emergency radiology · Aug 2014
Validation of a clinical decision rule: chest X-ray in patients with chest pain and possible acute coronary syndrome.
Current literature suggests that a large proportion of chest X-rays (CXRs) performed in emergency department (ED) patients with chest pain and suspected acute coronary syndrome (ACS) are unnecessary. The Canadian ACS Guidelines aim to guide clinicians in the appropriate use of CXR within this patient population. This study determined the prevalence of clinically significant CXR abnormalities and assessed the utility of the guidelines in a population of ED patients with chest pain and suspected ACS. ⋯ Had the ACS guidelines been applied to our patient population, the number of CXR performed would have been reduced by 47 %. This study suggests that the ACS Guidelines has the potential to reduce the numbers of unnecessary CXR performed in ED patients. However, this would come at the expense of missing a minority of significant CXR abnormalities.