Thursday, June 21, 2007

Is portable imaging the answer?

A company producing portable CT scanners, NeuroLogica, supports the NFL summit to review concussion policies. Evidently, their CereTom scanner was adopted as the "Official Scanner of the De La Hoya/Mayweather fight", and
NeuroLogica recently received accolades from medical staff ringside at the Oscar De La Hoya - Floyd Mayweather fight on May 5, as the company provided its mobile, cordless CT scanner, the CereTom, to scan boxers post-fight. The company scanned eight boxers following fights throughout the weekend, and potentially saved one man's life by identifying a brain bleed that otherwise may have gone undiagnosed had he not been scanned.
The problem is that concussions rarely involve positive finding on neuroimaging... other than the extremely rare moderate-to-severe closed head injury with intra-cranial bleeding, a CT-scanner will likely show nothing following an concussion.