Value of Emergent Neurovascular Imaging for "Seat Belt Injury": A Multi-institutional Study.

The risk of vascular injury in the presence of the cervical seat belt sign is small, and most patients diagnosed with blunt cerebrovascular injury have other associated findings. Therefore, CTA based solely on this sign has limited value (3/567 =  a 0.5% positivity rate). We suggest that in the absence of other clinical findings, the seat belt sign does not independently justify neck CTA in patients after trauma.