Introduction
Trauma is the leading cause of death among people aged 1 to 45 years. In 2010, nearly 5.1 million people died from injuries [
1]-[
3]. Early diagnosis and treatment are usually the key elements to major trauma patients (MTPs) [
4]. There have been studies reporting that a reduction of the diagnostic interval is associated with better prognosis [
5]-[
7]. Regarding this, recent guidelines for the management of bleeding and coagulopathy recommend that the time elapsed between injury and operation should be minimized [
8]. Plain X-rays of the chest and pelvis, focused assessment sonograph trauma (FAST), and organ-specific computed tomography (CT) are conventional evaluation methods in the early diagnostic work-up in MTPs which is recommended by the Advanced Trauma Life Support (ATLS®) protocol [
9],[
10]. However, it often results in misdiagnosis of some potential life-threatening solid organ injuries and is time-consuming [
4],[
11]-[
16].
During the last decades, CT has played a pivotal role in the early evaluation of MTPs. High resolution multi-slice CT (HRCT) is more sensitive in detecting various occult injuries, especially those potentially life-threatening injuries. Also HRCT is more reliable in excluding underlying injuries [
11]-[
16]. Meanwhile, the introduction of multi-slice helical CT (MSCT) has significantly shortened the scanning time [
17]. In some developed nations, an increasing number of trauma centers use whole-body CT (WBCT) (defined as a CT scan including the head, neck, chest, abdomen, pelvis, and spine) as an early evaluation tool in MTPs. Moreover, in some trauma centers, CT scanner has been located within the emergency department or trauma bay so as to reduce the time from patient’s arrival to WBCT [
18]. Recently, clinicians have recognized the advantages of WBCT (especially its diagnostic superiority and time gain) [
19],[
20]. In addition, there are growing studies indicate that the integration of WBCT into the early assessment protocol significantly increases the probability of survival in those who are severely injured [
18]-[
23]. Huber-Wagner and colleagues reported that WBCT during trauma resuscitation is associated with a lower risk of mortality in patients regardless of their hemodynamic status [
18],[
19]. Patients with unstable hemodynamics can be left in their single position to complete the WBCT [
4].
Although the proportion of use of WBCT in major trauma has been increased (from 5% in 2002 to 46% in 2010) [
24],[
25], greater radiation expose becomes one of the major concern for the public because it may induce potential adverse outcomes. For example, the risk of dying from radiation induced cancer is estimated to be 0.08% after one single WBCT in a 45-year old patient [
26]. And 1.5%-2.0% malignant tumors are associated with radiation expose in CT scan in America [
27]. However, in the field of trauma, it remains inconclusive whether WBCT should be used as an initial assessment tool in MTPs. [
28],[
29]. Two previous published meta-analysis reported that the application of immediate WBCT has no effect on mortality in MTPs [
30],[
31]. Recently, several large-scale studies have indicated that the integration of WBCT into initial trauma management can decrease mortality in MTPs. As such, it is high time that those findings should be systematically analyzed.
Discussion
Our results indicated that the integration of WBCT into the early diagnostic protocol significantly increased the probability of survival in MTPs. We also found that patients in the WBCT group had a significantly shorter ED stay. And there was no effect of WBCT on the length of ICU and hospital stay. To our best knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis of current published trials on the use of WBCT in MTPs.
In addition, patients in the WBCT group have a longer duration of mechanic ventilation and a higher incidence of MODS/MOF, as compared with those in the control group. However, it's not yet clear if there is any true cause-and-effect relationship between the application of WBCT and these adverse outcomes. Firstly, this is probably a result of the reduction of the mortality rate in MTPs. Patients that would have died if without WBCT now survive being aware of the whole injury pattern obtained by WBCT early. Therefore, the higher incidence of MODS/MOF in the WBCT group probably because there are more MTPs survivors in the early phase of hospital care. It has been reported that the classic trimodal death distribution of death following injury (the first peak included immediate deaths, the second peak included early hospital death, and The third peak included the late deaths) has been changed and is much more skewed to early hospital death, largely due to better prehospital and intensive care [
44],[
45]. Therefore, the biggest challenge is to reduce early hospital mortality. From this perspective, there would seem to be a good rationale for use of WBCT in MTPs to reduce early hospital mortality. Secondly, patients in the WBCT group are more serious (higher ISS values) than those in the NWBCT group which also might account for the higher incidence of MODS/MOF, and longer duration of mechanical ventilation in the WBCT group.
Computed tomography (CT) possesses multiple advantages in MTPs. Firstly, compared with conventional diagnostic approaches, WBCT has higher accuracy especially in the diagnosis of solid organ injuries [
39]. Secondly, WBCT can significantly reduce time interval between patient’s arrival and the end of life saving procedures, the end of diagnostic procedures, and the beginning of emergency surgery [
4],[
20],[
39],[
46]. A delay of proper surgical care is associated with higher risk of preventable death in trauma care [
20]. Rieger et al. reported that it was possible to detect all injuries through WBCT and the time for diagnostic work-up was shortened by 50% as a result of the early use of WBCT. Thirdly, patients in the WBCT group have a shorter ED stay in comparison with those in the control group [
4],[
39],[
46]. Hilbert and colleagues found that a new algorithm that integrating multi-slice CT into the early diagnostic protocol can significantly reduce the length of stay in the trauma room [
47].
Some researchers hold that it is reasonable to screen MTPs (ISS ≥16) with WBCT [
4],[
23],[
40],[
48],[
49]. However, how to accurately identify patients who are severely traumatized remains a problem. The conventional approach is based on injury mechanism, clinical symptom, and physiological indicators [
49]. However, under this triage criteria, almost 30% of patients were found to have an ISS below 16 (over-triage) [
21],[
49]. Unnecessary CT scanning not only can increase the risk of radiation expose, but also is associated with a substantial economic burden [
26],[
27]. Fortunately with the continuous improvement of CT scanning technology, especially after the introduction of iterative reconstruction techniques, the effective dose of WBCT has decreased from 10-20 mSv to 5-10 mSv [
19]. And it has been reported that compared to selective CT, WBCT induces no increased radiation dose in favorable situations [
50]. Sierink et al. recently reported that although MTPs (ISS≥16) in the WBCT group experienced higher radiation dose in the trauma room, the total radiation dose throughout hospital admission was comparable between groups [
25]. In short, the triage rule may need to be reevaluated.
Some limitations of this study deserve to be mentioned. Firstly, all included studies in this meta-analysis are observational, non-randomized studies. However, based on the available data, and the fact that WBCT has significantly speeded up the diagnosis and treatment process and increased the probability of survival in MTPs, we do not feel that randomized controlled trials (RCTs) can change the current evidence, and it is unethical currently. Secondly, there were significant differences in baseline characteristics between groups, especially the ISS values [
19]-[
21],[
23],[
40],[
41]. Base-line demographic and clinical characteristics were well matched between the two groups in only two studies [
38],[
39]. Moreover, in three studies, the number of patients in the NWBCT and WBCT groups varied significantly which would increase the probability of type I error [
23],[
40],[
41]. Thirdly, we cannot attribute the survival benefits to the application of WBCT directly, as it is well known that trauma mortality has been ameliorated in many developed countries due to the improved trauma management (not only the introduction of WBCT). Hutter et al. [
21] and colleagues also reported that both the use and the availability of WBCT were associated with a lower risk of all-cause mortality. This indicates that temporal comparison is also a major confounder. Finally, we cannot rule out other residual confounding factors, such as type of the scanners, scanning methods, indications for WBCT, different inclusion criteria, the location of the scanners or potential publication bias.
Authors’ contributions
Dr Jiang is guarantor of the paper, taking responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. LBJ MZ YFM conceived and designed the experiments. LBJ SYJ LGY performed the literature search and review. LBJ, LGY, MZ, YFM evaluated the quality of literatures. LBJ LGY extracted relevant data. LBJ SYJ MZ YAX conducted the statistical analysis. LBJ SYJ LGY ZZZ wrote the manuscript. LBJ SYJ YFM LGY ZJZ YAX MZ read and approved the final manuscript.
Acknowledgements
This work was performed at the Department of Emergency Medicine, Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University, School of Medicine and Research Institute of Emergency Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. We thank Xiaojun He, MPH, for providing guidance on the statistical analysis. We also thank all the relevant staff of the EDs for assisting in the implementation of this study.
Funding
This work was funded by National 12th Five-Year Plan National Technology Support Program (2012BAI11B0).
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Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.