If my child suffers a head injury, does she need a CT scan?

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A:Recent medical developments have found that CT scans are overused on children with head injuries. For children with non-severe head injuries, the risk that they will develop brain cancer from the CT radiation exposure is greater than their risk of serious brain trauma. New guidelines indicate when a child with head trauma should receive a CT scan. Doctors are instructed to observe whether certain factors are present or not before deciding to order a CT scan. Those factors include obvious signs of skull fracture, change in behavior, swelling in the head, whether and to what degree the child lost consciousness, and the way the child sustained her head injury.

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