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Traditional plain radiography of the cervical spine in patients with multiple trauma generally has been replaced by computed tomography (CT), but some clinicians are reluctant to accept a negative CT scan to definitively exclude significant injury and resort to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) as the definitive test in patients with persistent pain with or without nonspecific neurological complaints. Australian investigators reviewed medical records and imaging studies for a convenience sample of 55 intubated (and therefore clinically unassessable) patients with multiple trauma who were admitted to an intensive care unit. Each patient underwent an MRI study of the C-spine following normal findings on helical CT scan.
Ten patients had stable …