PECARN, CATCH, CHALICE … or None of the Above?

The decision instrument used to determine the need for neuroimaging in minor head trauma essentially a question of location. If you’re in the U.S., the guidelines feature PECARN. In Canada, CATCH. In the U.K., CHALICE. But, there’s a whole big world out there – what ought they use?

This is a prospective observational study from two countries out in that big remainder of the world – Australia and New Zealand. Over approximately 3.5 years, these authors enrolled patients with non-trivial mild head injuries (GCS 13-15) and tabulated various rule criteria and outcomes. Each rule has slightly different entry criteria and purpose, but over the course of the study, 20,317 patients were gathered for their comparative analysis.

And, the winner … is Australian and New Zealand general practice. Of these 20,000 patients included, only 2,106 (10%) underwent CT. It is hard to read between the lines and determine how many of the injuries included in this analysis were missed on the initial presentation, but if rate of neuroimaging is the simplest criteria for winning, there’s no competition. Applying CHALICE to their analysis cohort would have increased their CT rate to approximately 22%, and CATCH would raise the rate to 30.2%. Application of PECARN would place 46% of the cohort into CT vs. observation – an uncertain range, but certainly higher than 10%.

Regardless, in their stated comparison, the true winner depends on the value-weighting of sensitivity and resource utilization. PECARN approached 100% or 99% sensitivity, missing only 1 patient with clinically important traumatic brain injury out of ~10,000. Contrawise, CATCH and CHALICE missed 13 and 12 out of ~13,000 and ~14,000, respectively. Most of these did not undergo neurosurgical intervention, but a couple missed by CHALICE and CATCH would. However, as noted above, PECARN is probably substantially less specific than both CATCH and CHALICE, which has relatively profound effect on utilization for a low-frequency outcome.

Ultimately, however, any of these decision instruments is usable – as a supplement to your clinical reasoning. Each of these rules simplifies a complex decision into one less so, with all its inherent weaknesses. Fewer than 1% of children with mild head injury need neurosurgical intervention and these are certainly rarely missed by any typical practice. In settings with high CT utilization rates, any one of these instruments will likely prove beneficial. In Australia and New Zealand – as well as many other places around the world – potentially not so much.  This is probably a fine example of the need to compare decision instruments to clinician gestalt.

“Accuracy of PECARN, CATCH, and CHALICE head injury decision rules in children: a prospective cohort study”

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(17)30555-X/abstract