Survey on scanning pediatric patients' heads with CT

Pediatric patients are especially sensitive to radiation, and when scanning their heads with CT, it is necessary to do so with a low dose and pay very close attention. However, there are many problems when scanning pediatric patients, and it is often confusing to set the conditions for scanning. To do a survey and comparison, we issued a questionnaire to 23 pediatric hospitals and 89 university hospitals, asking about their usage of sedation, studied disorders, as well as how and under what conditions they scan their patients. The percentage of response was 40% in total. Based on the questionnaire results, we could not see much difference in the conditions for scanning. However, there was a significant difference in the usage of sedation and studied disorders between pediatric hospitals and university hospitals. The most studied disorders at pediatric hospitals were convulsion and consciousness disorders, and low-contrast areas such as the albocinereous, which requires images without movement artifacts. In order to obtain clear images, the patient was put under sedation. On the other hand, university hospitals often deal with external injuries, which usually involve danger in using sedation, and patients are usually examined without it. In addition, the usage of sedation is rare because bleeding brings up high-contrast images, and it is easy to make a diagnosis even if there is some movement artifact. Also to aim at setting a standard for medical technology, from here on, guidelines of examining methods and setting conditions should be made depending on how the different disorders should be treated.