Biffl et al.[11] selected asymptomatic patients using seven risk criteria for cervical vessel injury and observed an increase in the incidence of BCVI of between 0.1% to 1.1% over a two and a half year period. The employment of criteria to identify patients with BCVI should lead to an increased incidence of cervical vessel injury diagnosis. On the other hand, the use of more specific MI-503 molecular weight imaging methods that are less invasive or noninvasive, such as angiotomography or angioresonance imaging, will inevitably

raise the cost of trauma care. Ideally, the most frequently occurring criteria should be identified and a limited number of criteria for screening should be used to improve the rate of diagnosis without excessive cost increases. In the current study, Apoptosis antagonist 11 inclusion criteria were selected to identify trauma patients with

BCVI. These criteria included clinical signs and symptoms and alterations identified in simple radiographs. The overall goal of the current study was to analyze related criteria used in previous studies to determine which criteria were most predictive of BCVI. Unfortunately, we did not identify any criteria that distinguished between the patient groups with and without BCVI. The current study also examined the number of BCVI criteria met by each patient. Out of the 23 patients with BCVI, there was no significant relationship between the number of

BCVI criteria met and BCVI occurrence. It is possible that a future study with a larger patient group would conclude that the use of multiple criteria is not necessary. However, based on the results of the current study, we conclude that all 11 criteria should be used to identify BCVI in blunt trauma patients. MTMR9 Biffl et al. studied problems associated with BCVI over a period of 9 years. One of the objectives of that study was to identify associated or independent risk criteria that could cause BCVI [1, 2, 6, 7]. Through multivariate analysis of the criteria used, they found that a score less than or equal to 6 on the Glasgow coma scale, a petrous bone fracture, diffuse axonal injury, and LeFort II or III type facial fractures correlated significantly with carotid and vertebral artery injuries caused by blunt trauma. Fracture of cervical vertebrae was identified as a unique predictive risk criteria and was independent of vertebral artery injury in blunt trauma. Previous Brazilian studies have not defined BCVI incidence or associated risks. In the current study, we identified a 0.93% incidence of BCVI in a group of 100 blunt trauma patients, but we did not identify any specific risk factor that was more predictive than the others.