Doctors in emergency departments are being told to think twice before ordering a CT scan for children, under newly released head injury guidelines.
Photo: 123RF
The guidelines for clinicians in New Zealand and Australia lay out the best strategies for diagnosing and treating mild-to-moderate head injuries like concussion.
Professor Stuart Dalziel is the Cure Kids Chair of Child Health Research at the University of Auckland, and a paediatric emergency physician at Starship.
He contributed to the guidelines, alongside specialists from Australia and New Zealand.
They clearly describe "who should get a CT scan, who should not get a CT scan, and who should be observed in hospital," Dalziel said.
He said CT scans hadn't always been used consistently across hospitals, and could cause cancer in between 1 in 5000 to 1 in 10,000 cases.
The guidelines aimed to reduce CT scan variation rates and mitigate the risk of cancer, while still balancing the need for scans in some cases.
"So if a child is acutely unwell then the right thing to do is to get that CT scan," Dalziel said.
"But if they don't need to have a CT scan the the right thing for us to do as clinicians is actually to send that child home with some good common-sense advice about when to return to hospital."
Dalziel said the guidelines would also give clinicians clear advice to provide families around managing paediatric concussions while at home.