Indications for Computed Tomography in Patients with Minor Head Injury

The question of which patients with head trauma should undergo scanning has remained controversial since the introduction of computed tomography (CT) in the early 1970s. Initially, CT was a scarce resource reserved for severely injured patients. As CT scanners became more widely available, numerous studies of CT have focused on patients with minor head injury who have intracranial lesions. In the early 1990s, several retrospective studies of patients with minor head injury reported substantial proportions with intracranial lesions on CT (17 to 20 percent). These studies included patients with scores of 13 to 15 on the Glasgow Coma Scale, indicating . . .