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Whole-body MDCT angiography should be considered the method of choice for blunt cerebrovascular injuries screening in patients who have sustained multiple trauma, Italian researchers affirm.

Whole-body MDCT angiography should be considered the method of choice for blunt cerebrovascular injuries screening in patients who have sustained multiple trauma, Italian researchers affirm.

The results of the study led by Alessandro Lemos, MD, from the University of Milan, were presented this Sunday at the Radiological Society of North America's 2007 Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The purpose of the study was to compare diagnostic accuracy, scan time, radiation dose and image quality of 'whole-body' versus 'focused' multi-detector CT angiography in the detection of blunt cerebrovascular injuries (BCVI) in multi-system trauma patients.

For this, a total of 1041 patients underwent MDCT angiography, 507 using the focused acquisition protocol (FCT) and the remaining 434 using the whole-body acquisition protocol (WBCT).

Twenty-eight patients (three per cent) had BCVI - 16 of them were detected using the WBCT and the remaining 12, using the FCT.

Sensitivity, specificity and overall accuracy of WBCT were 63, 96 and 90 per cent respectively, while for FCT they were 65, 99 and 92 per cent. There was no statistical difference with regard to image quality between the two protocols . Both the radiation dose and the scan time were greater using FCT than WBCT.

"Whole-body MDCT angiography is time-efficient and allows simultaneous evaluation of vascular and parenchymal damage", said Dr Lemos. "The method is not only feasible but results in significantly faster image collection and lower radiation dosage than focused MDCT angiography, while maintaining similar diagnostic accuracy and image quality", he concluded.