NCT00785876

Implementation of the Low Risk Ankle Rule

Controlled Radiography for Ankle Injury Cases in Kids in the Emergency Department: Implementation of the Low Risk Ankle Rule

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 3,000 (estimated)
• Sponsor: The Hospital for Sick Children · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 3 Years – 16 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Ankle injuries are a very common injury in children. Each year approximately 35000 kids present to Ontario emergency departments (ED) with this problem. Right now, about 90% of these children get x-rays of the injured ankle, even though only 12% of these x-rays show a break in the bone. Some excellent research has created some rules that doctors can use to help them decide which children really need x-rays. Unfortunately, even though these rules have been proven to safely reduce x-rays by as much as two-thirds, most doctors are not using these rules. Therefore, this study will be the first to put the best paediatric ankle x-ray rule, the Low Rick Ankle Rule, into physician practice in EDs. Our main goal is to determine how much we can reduce ankle x-ray rates in EDs that use this rule regularly versus those that do not. If we show that doctors can safely use this rule regularly and the number of ankle x-rays will be significantly less, this will lessen unnecessary potentially harmful radiation exposure in children, these children will spend less time in an ED, and the health care system will save money.

Conditions

• Ankle Injury

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	LRAR Implementation	Pre-LRAR - no changes in the usual procedures for the first 26 weeks except for flagging of all paediatric charts with ankle injuries, ED documentation which will not refer to the LRAR and phone follow up. Post-LRAR: At 27 weeks, in addition to the aforementioned ED collection sheet and phone follow up, the implementation strategy for the LRAR rule and related management will be introduced at the intervention hospitals.

Timeline

• Start date: 2008-11-01
• Primary completion: 2011-11-01
• Completion: 2011-11-01
• First posted: 2008-11-05
• Last updated: 2017-10-09

Locations

4 sites across 1 country: Canada