Summary of workshop on CT in emergency medicine: Ensuring appropriate use

This paper addresses the increasing use of CT in medical radiologic imaging, with a focus on applications in emergency medicine. The rapidly increasing use of CT in medical imaging over the past 3 decades has been a major subject in many recent publications, including a discussion of concerns about patient radiation doses, unnecessary CT examinations, and the costs of CT examinations. One area of these concerns has been the use of CT examinations for triage, selection of treatment options, and release of patients from emergency medical settings. On September 23 and 24, 2009, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements held a workshop on appropriate uses of CT imaging with emergency patients. The workshop was cosponsored by 8 private and government organizations: the American Association of Physicists in Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the ACR, the American Society of Emergency Radiology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Landauer, Inc, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, and the US Environmental Protection Agency. This paper presents a summary of discussions at the workshop and recommendations for important areas of consideration in a subsequent consensus paper to be prepared on clinical guidance for applications of CT in emergency medicine procedures.