Acute haemorrhage rate in 28,000 Out-of-Hours CT heads

Abstract

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to assess the acute haemorrhage rate in patients who had CT head investigation out-of-hours with and without trauma and compare the rates of haemorrhage between warfarin and DOACs, at a busy teritary teaching hospital. Methods: All CT heads performed between January 2008 and December 2019 were identified from the radiology information system (RIS) at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals (STH), with the requesting information being available from January 2015. The clinical information was assessed for the mention of trauma or anticoagulation and the reports were categorised into acute and non-acute findings. Results: Between 2008 and 2019 the number of scans increased by 63%, with scans performed out of hours increasing by 278%. Between 2015 and 2019, the incidence of acute ICH was similar over the 5 year period, averaging at 6.9% and ranging from 6.1 to 7.6%. The rate of detection of acute haemorrhage following trauma was greater in those not anticoagulated (6.8%), compared with patients on anticoagulants such as warfarin (5.2%) or DOACs (2.8%). Conclusions: Over 12 years, there has been a significant increase in the number of CT heads performed at STH. The rate of ICH has remained steady over the last 5 years indicating a justified increase in imaging demand. However the incidence of ICH in patients prescribed DOACs is lower than the general population and those on warfarin. Advances in knowledge: : This finding in a large centre should prompt discussion of the risk of bleeding with DOACs in relation to CT head imaging guidelines.

Systematic Review of Artificial Intelligence for Abnormality Detection in High-volume Neuroimaging and Subgroup Meta-analysis for Intracranial Hemorrhage Detection

“…There were sufficient studies in one subgroup (intracranial hemorrhage detection in CT scans) for the calculation of prevalence-adjusted PPV. Here, we chose a prevalence of 10% based on recent evidence of routine clinical practice in the UK [ 16 ]. The prevalence-adjusted PPV we subsequently quote can be interpreted as the PPV that would be expected for each model if the prevalence of ICH within the test dataset was 10%.…”