A Study on the Application of the Canadian Cervical Spine Rule (CSSR)

There are many guidelines and rules which are available as a guide for clinicians to use in the assessment for the need of lateral cervical spine x-rays(LCX) in trauma. Despite this, the number of LCX done in Accident And Emergency Department are still alarmingly high.The main reason being identified was due to overdoing of the LCX for the alert, stable and low risk patients with blunt injury to the neck by the emergency doctors.These elobarous figure can be reduce by utilisation of CCSR should reduce the number of LCX requested by the emergency doctors.The reduction of this LCX request is translated to reduction in number of unnessasary radiation exposure,more efficient time spent by the all the individual ,process and system involve in the management of the patient.The cervical "collar off " time will also be shorter which translates into patient comfort.The implementation of an well accepted clinical guidelines is still facing a hard time.This scenario needs to be improved if patient safety ,comfort and rights being applauded.

Dr Rishya Manikam is currently the Head of Emergency and Trauma Unit at University Malaya.He is an emergency physician.His area of interest is Non Invasive Ventilation and Applied Physiology in critical care.He developed the PhysiologiQ concept of teaching physiology in a logical manner in critical care treatment.He is currently persuing his Phd.