Radiologists' recommendations for additional imaging (RAI) in the inpatient setting.

Abstract

The aim of our study was to measure the rate of radiologists' additional recommended imaging examinations (RAI) at a hospital-based inpatient setting and to estimate the influence on RAI of clinical variables. This retrospective study was approved by the institutional review board. Inpatients CT and US examinations interpreted by fifteen radiologists between October and December 2016 were studied. Information about RAI from radiology report texts was extracted manually. The analytic data set included the interpreting radiologists' years of experience, patient age, patient gender, radiologist gender, ordering service and "clinical question to be answered" as collected from the radiology request forms. Of the 1996 US and CT examinations performed between October and December 2016 in the inpatient setting, 34% (683 examinations) had a radiologists' RAI. The largest proportion of RAI was for chest CT, followed by PET-CT, abdominal CT and abdominal MRI. Patient age and gender had no impact on RAI. Radiologists' years of experience were inversely correlated to RAI. "Pneumonia" showed the highest rate of RAI due to follow-up of lung nodules. A high percentage of RAI resulted from CT and US radiologists' reports. The largest proportion of RAI was for chest CT, followed by PET-CT, abdominal CT, and abdominal MRI. Radiologists' years of experience play an important role in the number of the requested RAI. Further studies with a larger cohort of radiologists are needed to confirm the role of radiologists' experience in RAI. Also, follow-up studies are warranted to assess the number of RAI that are actually acted upon by the referring physicians.