Diagnostiek bij patiënten met licht traumatisch hoofdletsel

In the emergency department, we see many patients with minor head injury (MHI). To help physicians decide which patient should have a CT scan, decision rules have been developed that calculate the risk of intracranial complications based on a number of criteria. One of those decision rules is the CT in Head Injury Patients (CHIP) decision rule on which the Dutch national MHI guideline is based. In a recent hospital-based study in the Netherlands, the CHIP decision rule and three other decision rules were investigated. The different decision rules showed a variation in the percentage of unnecessary CT scans and failure to identify traumatic abnormalities on CT. The CHIP decision rule performed the best, but an update of the decision rule is needed. We expect that the results of our study and future update of the CHIP decision rule can contribute to an effective decision rule for clinical practice.

Conflict of interest and financial support: none declared.