*The AAST is monitoring the developments of COVID-19 in relation to the event. If the conference is postponed or canceled, the AAST will make an announcement on their website and also reach out to members and meeting attendees.

Division of Acute Care Assistant Professor Jonathan Black, M.D., will orally present a co-authored abstract: “Universal Screening for Blunt Cerebrovascular Injury” at the 2020 Annual Meeting of American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST) and Clinical Congress of Acute Care Surgery in Waikoloa, Hawaii in September.

The abstract was co-authored by Division of Acute Care Director and Professor Jeffrey Kerby, M.D., Ph.D., and Director of Research Jan Jansen, MBBS, Ph.D., as well as UAB Department of Neurosurgery Professor Mark Harrigan, M.D., in addition to four other providers. The study is about the authoring providers’ experience with universal screening for blunt cerebrovascular injury (BCVI). BCVI is an injury to an artery in the neck, either a carotid artery or vertebral artery.

In blunt trauma- car wrecks or falls, for example- these vessels can be injured. If a trauma system does not know to look for them, then the patient's BCVI may go undetected, which could be devastating as BCVI can lead to stroke. Traditionally, trauma hospitals use a set of defined criteria to decide who to screen for BCVI. Injuries like facial fractures, cervical spine fractures or skull fractures, all make a person more likely to have a BCVI, but no set of screening criteria is perfect. According to Black, even the most thorough screening criteria miss 5-10% of BCVI.

“We found that our incidence of BCVI is much higher than previously published, indicating that there are a lot of undetected BCVI,” said Black. “So, we are presenting our data and comparing it to the previously published guidelines to show that a lot of patients would be missed.”

Black shared that part of the reason the traditional screening guidelines came about was that screening used to be relatively labor intensive. 20-30 years ago, computed tomography (CT) technology did not accurately identify injuries to the neck vessels, so each patient that needed screening had to go to interventional radiology for an angiogram.

Now CT technology has progressed to the point that almost everybody uses a CT angiogram (CTA) to screen these patients, a much quicker and less invasive way to screen. However, the old screening mindset still persists. Black has hopes for the meaning of their research and its impact on the field of trauma care.

“We hope that our data will push the trauma community to move away from traditional screening criteria and start screening everyone.” said Black. “We truly feel that this will elevate the level of patient care across trauma systems.”

Kerby is pleased with the research that his faculty collaboratively conducted.

“I’m proud of the effort that Dr. Black and the entire team has put into this collaborative study,” said Kerby. “We continue to have motivated, high-performing faculty devoted to the care of the injured patient, and this is another example of the multi-disciplinary, transformative research that is an integral part of the culture at UAB.”