Clinicians’ and Patients’ Factors Affecting the Implementation of Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma Scans Examination in Diagnosing Visceral Injury Among Trauma Patients at the Emergency Department: A retrospective study at a tertiary hospital in northern Tanzania

Emmanuel Ernest Lyanga; Francis Sakita; Clement Kalambo

doi:10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i01.69181

Clinicians’ and Patients’ Factors Affecting the Implementation of Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma Scans Examination in Diagnosing Visceral Injury Among Trauma Patients at the Emergency Department: A retrospective study at a tertiary hospital in northern Tanzania

Author(s)	Dr. Emmanuel Ernest Lyanga, Francis Sakita, Clement Kalambo
Country	Tanzania
Abstract	Background: Focused Assessment using Sonography for Trauma (FAST) is commonly employed to identify visceral organ injuries once traumatic accidents have occurred. Implementation of the FAST scan is used to evaluate the existence of visceral organ injuries, though some clinicians overestimate the real needs of the FAST scan examination when they order it for trauma not involving thoracic and abdominal cavities, and this leads to ineffective implementation of it and leads to delay of patient management and unnecessary costs. Therefore, this study aimed to assess clinicians’ and patients’ factors affecting the implementation of focused assessment with Sonography in trauma (FAST) scan examinations in diagnosing visceral injury among trauma patients at the Emergency Department (EMD) in a tertiary hospital in Northern Tanzania. Methodology: The hospital-based retrospective study was employed at EMD at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center (KCMC), covering a period of one year. Data were obtained using a data extraction tool from patients’ medical files who had an accident and attended the emergency department in one year. At a CI of 95%, data were analyzed using SPSS version 25.0, and statistical significance was set at P<0.05. Results: Out of 110 trauma patients who were enrolled, 81 (73.6%) of them were incorrectly subjected to FAST scan examination. And of these patients, 15.50% had abdominal and chest injuries, while the rest had other injuries. Effective implementation of FAST scan examination is affected by clinician factors such as education level, working experience, training of FAST scan examination, and performing physical examination before FAST scan examination. While patient factors affecting the effective implementation of the FAST scan examination include the patient’s condition, site of injury, and mechanism of injury. Conclusions: The result of the study shows that there is ineffective implementation of FAST scan examination among trauma patients who attended the EMD department at KCMC. More than half of the patients were incorrectly subjected to FAST scan examination, and this was influenced by both clinician and patient factors. There is a need for collaboration among senior staff and junior and regular provision of refresher training to overcome the problem of ineffective implementation of FAST scan examinations.
Keywords	Key words: ineffective implementation, FAST scans visceral injuries
Field	Medical / Pharmacy
Published In	Volume 8, Issue 1, January-February 2026
Published On	2026-02-27
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2026.v08i01.69181

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Clinicians’ and Patients’ Factors Affecting the Implementation of Focused Assessment with Sonography in Trauma Scans Examination in Diagnosing Visceral Injury Among Trauma Patients at the Emergency Department: A retrospective study at a tertiary hospital in northern Tanzania

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