Polytrauma Imaging Guidelines

The European Society of Emergency Radiology (ESER) is an apolitical, non-profit organisation, exclusively and directly dedicated to promoting and coordinating the scientific, philanthropic, intellectual and professional activities of Emergency Radiology. The Society’s mission at all times is to serve the health care needs of the general public through the support of science, teaching, research and the quality of service in the field of Emergency Radiology. One particular aim of ESER is to advance and improve the radiological aspects of emergent patient care and to advance the quality of diagnosis and treatment of acutely ill or injured patients using imaging.

Emergency Radiology encompasses medical and surgical subspecialties including polytrauma services. Concerning the latter, past and present ESER board members had taken part in several interdisciplinary guideline processes. However, the ESER board has observed the lack of dedicated separate independent radiological recommendations for a radiological polytrauma service. The ESER has therefore created such recommendations with the hope that this will start to bring corresponding diverse national and international radiological societies together in order to refine the statements, gain visibility for national societies and in particular, strengthen the role of radiology in upcoming interdisciplinary polytrauma guideline development.
As ESER also wants to be a promotor of future scientific work, we hope to give advice on specific questions as well as for a more general principal direction. To update this guideline, ESER will refine the statements at appropriate time intervals, (currently estimated to be two years).

The Guideline on Radiological Polytrauma Imaging and Service is published simultaneously in a comprehensive short version (this article) and a full version (download of the full version below). This causes text overlap between the two versions. We mention this to avoid a potential conflict with respect to self-plagiarism.

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Citation short version:
Wirth S, Hebebrand J, Basilico R, Berger FH, Blanco A, Calli C, Dumba M, Linsenmaier U, Mück F, Nieboer KH, Scaglione M, Weber MA, Dick E. European Society of Emergency Radiology – Guideline on Radiological Polytrauma Imaging and Service (short version). Insights into Imaging, day of acceptance: 09.11.2020.

Copyright statement

No copyright restrictions, unless you cite incorrectly.

Citation full version:
Wirth S, Hebebrand J, Basilico R, Berger FH, Blanco A, Calli C, Dumba M, Linsenmaier U, Mück F, Nieboer KH, Scaglione M, Weber MA, Dick E. European Society of Emergency Radiology – Guideline on Radiological Polytrauma Imaging and Service (full version). Available from: https://www.eser-society.org/polytrauma-imaging-guidelines/, accessed: <day of your access>.