Electronic medical record tool cuts down on unnecessary CT scans in emergency room

A new electronic medical record tool that tallies patients’ previous radiation exposure from CT scans helps reduce potentially unnecessary use of the tests among emergency room patients with abdominal pain, according to a study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The new study shows that when the tool is in use, patients are 10 percent less likely to undergo a CT scan, without increasing the number of patients who are admitted to the hospital.
Abdominal pain is the most common reason why people seek care in emergency rooms in the United States, accounting for 10 million visits each year. But the symptoms may be caused by myriad problems, from those that can be fixed with a single dose of an over-the-counter drug to those that could prove life-threatening within hours: from a bout of GI distress to an ectopic pregnancy; from constipation to an appendix about to burst; from a hernia to signs of a chronic condition like Crohn’s disease.
This complex diagnostic face-off plays a huge role in why emergency physicians tend to lean heavily on tests like CT scans, even though they expose patients to radiation and there are few clear guidelines on which patients should get them. Since the mid-1990s, the use of CT scans to diagnose ER patients has surged, increasing ten-fold. Today, 14 percent of all emergency room patients get scanned