ABSTRACT

Background and Aim: Blunt abdominal trauma may lead to a serious situation that necessitates prompt diagnosis and treatment. The intra-abdominal injury effective diagnosis is difficult in patient’s management in such cases. The present study aims to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of computed tomography scans in active internal bleeding following abdominal trauma.

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study was carried out on 84 blunt abdominal trauma patients in the Department of Radiology Hayatabad Medical Complex, Peshawar for duration of six months from January 2021 to June 2021. All the patients with no clinical manifestations underwent diagnostic CT scans. Those who had a positive CT scan underwent laparotomy. The remaining patients were monitored for 24 hours and were discharged in case of no serious issues. Demographic details, patient information, trauma mechanism, CT scan indications, and findings, and laparotomy results were recorded. Regarding injured organs, specificity, sensitivity, and diagnostic accuracy of CT scans were determined. For individual cases, CT scans specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy were calculated. SPSS version 20 was used for data analysis.

Results: This study included 84 patients, out of which 73 (86.9%) were male and 11(13.1%) were female. Patients aged 20-40 years were more prevalent 47 (56%), followed by those aged over 40 years were 20 (23.8%) and 10 to 19 years old were 17 (20.2%). Liver and spleen injuries had the highest CT scan sensitivity of 87.5% and 96.7% respectively. On the other hand, The CT scan's specificity was high in the injured kidneys (94%) and retroperitoneal hematoma 97.3% compared to other organ’s injuries. The diagnostic accuracy of CT scans in the identification of liver, kidney injuries, spleen, and retroperitoneal hematoma injuries was 93.7%, 92.3%, 96.2%, and 92.3% respectively.

Conclusion: Our study found that CT scans are capable of detecting a wide range of injuries. CT scans are exceptionally valuable for assessing blunt abdominal injuries with active internal bleeding patients Furthermore, CT investigation is quick and extensively accessible. CT can produce high-resolution images with MPR and scanning protocol.