title: New study: CT a poor tool for patients presenting with dizziness.
abstract: A new study notes that dizziness accounted for roughly 4% of ED visits in 2011, and that patients seeking emergency care for the condition are on the increase. However, investigators point out that too often such patients receive expensive CT scans to rule out strokes even though CT not a good tool for this purpose. Experts say a bedside assessment that focuses on eye movements can do a better job of distinguishing between patients who are having strokes and those who have a benign form of dizziness, but the assessment requires clinical skill to perform with confidence. Nonetheless, some experts believe that the assessment will become a standard of care in the diagnosis of patients who present with dizziness within five years. Investigators project that costs associated with ED visits for dizziness will reach $4.4 billion by 2015, with much of this cost coming from expensive imaging tests that provide little value. Data show that the use of imaging tests on patients who present with dizziness has quadrupled since 1995. Experts say few physicians realize that CT scans miss more than 80% of strokes in the early stages. The horizontal head impulse test is a bedside exam that is highly accurate at predicting stroke, and could save $1 billion per year if skillfully performed on a large scale in busy EDs, say experts.
mesh_terms: D004244:Dizziness / Q000209:etiology*; D006801:Humans; D020521:Stroke / Q000150:complications / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging*; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D014481:United States