“But Doc, I didn’t hit my head THAT hard” Computed tomography (CT) scans are frequently performed after a head injury to rule out acute intracranial findings. However, most Emergency Department patients with a head injury have no acute CT findings. The Canadian CT Head Rule (CCHR) was developed to help clinicians determine when to order a CT image for patients with minor head injury.1 In 2010, a multi-centre prospective trial implemented the CCHR and …
Could my patient have an Aortic Dissection?
“List top 5 worrisome diagnoses for chest pain” – we’ve all asked this question to junior learners and medical students, and one answer that should always come up is aortic dissection (AD). As emergency physicians we are well versed in the entity, workup and management of AD, but as a fairly challenging diagnosis, I have often found it difficult to decide who needs to be worked up for dissection. During my training I …