ABSTRACT
Use in the Acute Care of TBI The TBI clinician should have reviewed the acute treatment records of the patient before or during the examination. It will be noted in those records that most, if not all, of the neuroimaging obtained at the time of the TBI is CT. CT is accepted worldwide as the neuroimaging screening tool for examining acute brain trauma, and in the United States, it is the modality of choice using ACR Appropriateness Criteria, Variants 1-7 (rating = 9/9 by ACR). It is the workhorse of brain trauma imaging, as it depicts bone, blood, and parenchymal injuries. It is fast, effective, and comparatively inexpensive when compared to many other neuroimaging modalities. Moreover, for the acutely traumatized person with any form of injury, it is safer to be placed into a CT scanner than an MRI scanner, as the magnets used in MRI can make life support machines and pacemakers nonfunctional.
