CT Soft Tissue Neck - Video Lesson

Welcome back again. This CT protocol review is about CT imaging of the soft tissues of the neck. This CT scan is essentially a catch all procedure that's useful for identifying almost any non arterial and non bone pathology of the neck. So if the patient has a mass or swelling or an abscess or even if they might have cancer in their neck, this would be the scan that we would perform. There are other ways to scan the neck that would not be appropriate. For example, if the patient has vascular issues, like problems with the carotid arteries or the vertebral arteries, we wouldn't use the soft tissue neck scan. If it's a vascular issue, we would do the CTA of the neck. Also, the patient could have traumatic injuries to the spine. Well, if this is a spine issue, once again, that would not indicate the soft tissue scan. Instead, we'd want to do CT of the c spine. So it's really important to understand that there are specific indications for CT imaging of the soft tissues of the neck, and that does not include