Analysis of the last decade of weekend out-of-hours CT imaging: how have things changed?

CT has become an invaluable diagnostic tool. The clinical applications and technological capacity of CT has continued to increase. There is an increasing demand for radiology services including during weekend on-call hours. The objective of this study was to assess the trend in weekend CT imaging requests over a ten-year period form 2001-2010. Electronic data was retrieved from the hospital Radiology Inpatient System. In total 8530 CT scans were performed during weekend on-call hours. Over the decade weekend imaging grew from 466 to 1448 (210.7%) CT examinations. CT brain imaging accounted for 3944 of the total 8530(46%) and this was a 126% increase. A ten-fold, eight-fold and three-fold increase occurred in adult CT thorax, CT pelvis and CT abdominal imaging respectively. These results demonstrate rising demand on radiology services and need to plan for continued future growth. Radiology and emergency departments need to prepare and develop pathways to deal with this projected growth.