This month’s newsletter addresses the electronic trauma flow sheet, and more generally, the electronic health record (EHR) in trauma. Here are the topics covered:
Let me present a scenario and first see how you might solve this problem.
A young man presents with a gunshot to the abdomen in the right mid-back. He is hemodynamically stable, and you get a chest xray. It shows a small caliber slug in the right upper quadrant, but no hemo- or pneumothorax. He has peritoneal signs, so you whisk him off to the OR for a laparotomy.
As you prep the patient for the case, you can feel a small mass just above the right costal margin. You incise the area and produce a 22 caliber bullet. Of course, you follow the chain of evidence rules and pass it off for the police. As you explore the abdomen, it appears that there are no gross injuries. You are concerned, however, that there may be an injury to the diaphragm in proximity to the bullet.
So here’s the question: how can you visualize the diaphragm in this area? The bullet was located below the right nipple. But the diaphragm in this area is covered by the liver, and is parallel to the floor. You can’t seem to feel a hole with your fat finger. But short of putting your whole head in the wound, you just can’t get a good angle to see the area in question.
How would you do it? Please tweet or leave comments with your suggestions. I’ll provide the answer(s) Monday!
Yesterday I gave a little perspective on the use of CT in assessing the diaphragm after penetrating injury. Today, I’ll break it down into some practical steps you can follow the next time you see one.
Step 1. Stable or unstable? If your patient arrives with unstable vital signs, and there is no other source but the abdomen, the answer is simple. Go to the OR for a laparotomy. Period. They are exsanguinating and the hemorrhage needs to be stopped.
Step 2. Mark the sites of penetration and take a chest x-ray. This will let you evaluate the potential trajectory of the object, and will give you your first glimpse of the diaphragm.
Step 3. Examine the abdomen. Actually, you should be doing this at the same time you are setting up for Step 2. If your patient has peritoneal signs, no further evaluation is needed. Just go to the OR for laparotomy. Look at the chest x-ray once you get there.
Step 4. Right side? If your appreciation of the path of penetration involves just the liver, take the patient to CT for evaluation of chest, abdomen, and pelvis. You need to see all three of these areas to assess for blood and fluid in both body cavities. After the study, if you still think the injury is limited to the liver, admit the patient for observation.
Step 5. Left side? Look at that chest x-ray again. If there are any irregularities at all, strongly consider going to the OR and starting with diagnostic laparoscopy. These irregularities can be glaring, like in the x-ray above. But they can be subtle, like some haziness above the diaphragm or small hemothorax. Obviously, if the injury is as clear as on the x-ray above, just open the abdomen. But if in doubt, start small.
Step 6. Admit and observe. Check the abdomen periodically, and repeat the chest x-ray daily. If anything changes, consider diagnostic laparoscopy. As a general rule, I don’t keep patients NPO “just in case.” Most will pass this test, and I don’t see a reason to starve my patients for the low likelihood they need to go to the OR.
Step 7. Make sure your patient gets a follow up evaluation. See them in your outpatient clinic, get a final chest x-ray and abdominal exam before you completely clear them.
Penetrating injury to the diaphragm, and specifically stab wounds, have been notoriously hard to diagnose since just about forever. Way back in the day (before CT), we tried all kinds of interesting things to help figure out if the patient had a real injury. Of course, we could just go to the OR and lap the patient (laparoscopy did not exist then). But the negative lap rate was significant, so we tried a host of less invasive techniques.
Remember diagnostic peritoneal lavage? Yeah, we tried that. The problem was that the threshold for red cells per cubic mm was not well defined. Some would supplement this technique with a chest tube to see if lavage fluid would drain out. And one paper described instilling nuclear medicine tracer into the abdomen and sitting the patient under a gamma camera for a few hours to see if any ended up in the chest. Groan!
We thought that CT would save us. Unfortunately, resolution was terrible in the early years. If you could actually see the injury on CT, it was probably because a large piece of stomach or colon had already fallen through it. But as detectors multiplied and resolution improved, we could begin to see some smaller defects. But we still missed a few. And the problem is that left-sided diaphragmatic holes slowly enlarge over time (years), until the stomach or colon falls through it. (See below)
A group of radiologists and surgeons in a Turkish trauma hospital recently published a modest series of patients with left-sided diaphragm injuries evaluated by CT. They looked at about 5 years of their experience in a group of patient who were at risk for the injury due to a thoraco-abdominal stab wound. Unstable patients were immediately taken to OR. All of the remaining patients underwent an initial CT scan, followed by diagnostic laparoscopy after 48 hours if they remained symptom free.
Here are the factoids:
A total of 43 stable patients with a left thoraco-abdominal stab were evaluated
30 patients had a normal CT, and 13 had the appearance of an injury
Of those who wereCT positive, only 9 of 13 (69%) actually had the injury at operation
Two of the 30 (7%) who were CT negative were found to have a diaphragm injury during followup laparoscopy
So in the author’s hands, there was 82% sensitivity, 88% specificity, a positive predictive value of only 69%, and a negative predictive value of 93%
Bottom line: The authors somehow looked at the numbers and concluded that CT is valuable for detecting left diaphragm injury. Huh? They missed 7% of injuries, only finding them later at laparoscopy. And they had a 31% negative laparotomy rate.
Now, it could be that the authors were using crappy equipment. Nowhere in their paper do they state how many detectors, or what technique was used. Since it took place over a 5 year period, it is quite possible that the earlier years of the study used equipment now considered to be out of date, or that there was no standardized technique.
CT may not yet be ready for prime time. But it can be a valuable tool. Tune in tomorrow for some tips on how and when to look for this insidious injury.
Reference: Evaluation of diaphragm in penetrating left thoracoabdominal stab injuries: The role of multislice computed tomography. Injury 46:1734-1737, 2015.
Duplicate radiographic studies are a continuing issue for trauma professionals, particularly after transfer from a smaller hospital to a trauma center. The incidence has been estimated anywhere from 25% to 60% of patients. A lot has been written about the radiation dangers, but what about cost?
A Level II trauma center reviewed their experience with duplicate studies in orthopedic transfer patients retrospectively over a one year period. They looked at the usual demographics, but also included payor, cost information, and reason for repeat imaging. Radiation dose information was also collected.
Here are the factoids:
513 patients were accepted from 36 referring hospitals
48% had at least one study repeated, 256 CT scans and 161 conventional imaging studies
Older patients and patients with low GCS were much more likely to receive repeat studies
There were no association with the size of the referring hospital or the ability of the patient to pay
Most transfers had commercial insurance; only 11% had Medicaid and 17% were uninsured
Additional radiation from repeat scans was 8 mSv. The average radiation dose from both hospitals was 38 mSv. This is 13 years of background radiation exposure!
The cost of all the repeat studies was over $96,000
Bottom line: This is an eye-opening study, particularly regarding how often repeat imaging is needed, how much additional radiation is delivered, and now, the cost. And remember that these are orthopedic patients, many of whom had isolated bony injuries. I would expect that patients with multiple and multi-system injuries would require more repeat imaging and waste even more money. It is imperative that all centers that receive transfers look at adopting some kind of electronic data transfer for imaging, be it a VPN or some cloud-based service. With the implementation of the Orange Book by the American College of Surgeons, Level I and II centers will receive a deficiency if they do not have some reliable mechanism for this.
“Level I and II facilities must have a mechanism in place to view radiographic imaging from referring hospitals within their catchment area (CD 11–42).”
Reference: Clinical and Economic Impact of Duplicated Radiographic Studies in Trauma Patients Transferred to a Regional Trauma Center. J Ortho Trauma 29(7):e214-e218, 2015.
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