Secondly, it indicated that there were no studies indicating that MRIs were any better than CTs, even though MRIs cost significantly more. A poor reason, in my opinion. Just because someone else practices outdated medicine is no reason you have to do it yourself. I can't tell you how many requests for MRIs I get for patients who have not even had a trial of conservative therapy. If you did an MRI on 100 people off the street who had no complaints of back pain, more than a third would show indications of disc disease.
Time is what tells.
Give the patient time to get better. Again, sometimes we image when we should do something else. Some orthopedists, I know, order them in an effort to justify an arthroscopic procedure. But I don't recall ever turning down arthroscopy in a patient who was thought to have internal injury. Let's all get better at practicing good medicine and not rely on testing to do our thinking for us.