Head injury Evaluation and Ambulance Diagnosis: A Feasibility Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Head injury Evaluation and Ambulance Diagnosis to avoid HOspital eMErgency admission: a HEAD HOME feasibility study
IRAS ID
316547
Contact name
Richard Body
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Manchester
ISRCTN Number
ISRCTN92566288
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 7 months, 1 days
Research summary
Most people who suffer a head injury have no serious damage to their brain or skull. However, a small number of people will have serious damage and some people will need an operation. It is often difficult to tell which patients have a serious head injury and which patients do not. At the moment, when an emergency ambulance is sent to patients who have a head injury, they will take all patients to hospital. In hospital, some patients will need a brain scan (a CT scan). However, most do not. Doctors in hospital use a checklist called the Canadian CT head rule to decide if a brain scan is needed. Research in thousands of patients have shown that this is safe. We want to find out if paramedics could use the Canadian CT head rule to find out which patients need a brain scan before they go to hospital. If they can do that accurately then many patients could safely avoid a trip to hospital, where there are often long waits. In this study we will look at how accurate the Canadian CT head rule is, we will find out how often paramedics and doctors in hospital agree with each other when applying the Canadian CT head rule, and we will see if it will be possible to carry out a future large research study to check how safe it would be for paramedics to use the Canadian CT head rule. We also plan to interview a small group of paramedics and patients to see if the study processes are acceptable or could be improved for a future large study.
REC name
North West - Greater Manchester South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/NW/0358
Date of REC Opinion
15 Dec 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion