Trends of CT use in the adult emergency department in a tertiary academic hospital of Korea during 2001-2010

Abstract

Objective: We wanted to assess the trends of CT examinations that were conducted in an adult emergency department (ED).

Materials and methods: We searched the medical database to identify adult patients (≥ 18 years) who had visited the ED and the number of CT examinations of the patients during the period from January 2001 to December 2010. We also analyzed the types of CT scans performed in terms of body parts, they were as follows; head CTs, facial bone CTs, neckl CTs, chest CTs, abdominal CTs, and miscellaneous CTs. Further, miscellaneous CTs were subdivided as CT angiography and others.

Results: A total of 113656 CT scans were examined for 409439 adult ED patients during a 10-year period, and the number of CT scans increased by 255% (from 4743 CTs in 2001 to 16856 CTs in 2010), while the adult ED patient volume increased by 34% during the same period. Although the head CTs proportionally occupied the most, the facial bone CTs had the largest rate of increase (3118%), followed by cervical CTs (1173%), chest CTs (455%), miscellaneous CTs (388%; 862% and 84% for CT angiography and others, respectively), abdominal CTs (315%) and head CTs (95%) per 1000 patients during the decade.

Conclusion: CT use in adult ED has increased at a rate that far exceeds the growth of ED patient volume, with facial bone CTs and cervical CTs having the largest increasing rate, followed by chest CTs, miscellaneous CTs, abdominal CTs and head CTs.

Keywords: Adult; Computed tomography; Emergency department; Utilization.

Fig. 1

Total number of CT scans performed for adult patients who visited emergency department for previous decade. CT scans per every 1000 patients increased from 124 CTs in 2001 to 330 CTs in 2010.

Fig. 2

Increase rate of CT examinations by anatomic region for previous decade. Compared with 2001 years, facial bone CTs shows largest rate of increase (3118%), followed by cervical CTs (1173%), chest CTs (455%), and miscellaneous CTs (388%; 862% and 84% for CT angiographies and et cetera, respectively), abdominal CTs (315%), and head CTs (95%) per 1000 patients.

Fig. 3

Number of patients who had multiple CT examinations.