Author Interviews, Emergency Care, JAMA, Medical Imaging, Pediatrics / 04.06.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Eyal Cohen, MD, M.Sc, FRCP(C) Professor, Pediatrics University of Toronto Co-Founder, Complex Care Program The Hospital for Sick Children   MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Minimizing care that provides little benefit to patients has become an important focus to decrease health care costs and improve the quality of care delivery.  Diagnostic imaging in children is a common focus for campaigns designed to reduce overuse both in Canada and the US. There are some suggestions that there may be more overuse of care in the United States than Canada, but there has been little study in children. We compared the use of low-value diagnostic imaging rates from four pediatric emergency departments in Ontario to 26 in the United States from 2006 to 2016.  We defined low-value imaging as situations where children are discharged from an emergency department with a diagnosis for which routine use of diagnostic imaging may not be necessary, like asthma or constipation.  (more…)