Pan-Scans Don’t Save Lives

Humans are fallible.  We don’t always make good choices, and our patients – bless their hearts – can sometimes be time bombs wrapped in meat.  Logically, then, as many trauma services have concluded, the solution is to eliminate the weak link: don’t let the human chose which parts of the body to scan – just scan it all.

This is REACT-2, a randomised [sic] trial evaluating precisely the limits to human judgment in a resource-utilization versus immediacy context.  In this multi-center trial, adult trauma patients wth suspected serious injury were randomized to either imaging guided by clinical evaluation or total-body CT.  The primary outcome was in-hospital mortality, with secondary outcomes relating to timeliness of diagnosis, to mortality in other time frames, morbidity, and costs.

This was a massive undertaking, with 1,403 patients randomly assigned to one of the arms, with ~540 in each arm successfully allocated and included in their primary analysis.  Each cohort was well-matched on baseline characteristics, including all physiologic markers, although the Triage Revised Trauma Score was slightly lower (worse) for the total-body CT group.  The results, in most concise form, weakly favor selective scanning.  There was no difference in mortality nor complications nor length-of-stay nor virtually any reliable secondary outcome.  Costs, as measured in European terms, were no different, despite the few scans obviated.  Time-to-diagnosis was slightly faster in the total-body CT group, owing to skipping initial conventional radiography, while radiation exposure was slightly lower in the selective scanning group.

In some respects, it is not surprising there were no differences found – as CT was still frequently utilized in the selective CT cohort, including nearly half that ultimately underwent total-body CT.  There were some differences noted in in-hospital Injury Severity Score between groups, and I agree with Rory Spiegel’s assertion this is probably an artifact of the routine total-body CT.  This study can be used to justify either strategy, however – with selective CT proponents focusing on the lack of differences in patient-oriented outcomes, and total-body CT proponents noting minimal resource and radiation savings at the expense of timeliness.

“Immediate total-body CT scanning versus conventional imaging and selective CT scanning in patients with severe trauma (REACT-2): a randomised controlled trial”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27371185