Identifying spinal injury in the emergency room

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

According to a new study, not all spinal damage sustained in an injury is visible on an ordinary x-ray.
Spinal injury is a common cause of presentation in the emergency room. Till now, it has been assumed that a regular x-ray is sufficient to show up any damage and that there is little to be gained by using computed tomography (CT) scanning. However, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggest it is time for a re-think.

They carried out CT scans on a number of patients with a spinal injury and found that one third had additional damage that was not clearly visible on x-ray. One fourth of these secondary injuries were in another part of the spine. These were not detectable by x-ray. So the doctors suggest that anyone coming to the emergency room with a spinal injury needs to have CT imaging of the whole spine to make sure all the damage is detected and treated.

Source
Annals of Emergency Medicine online 7th September 2005