James Brice

The diagnostic shortcomings of technetium-99m-sestamibi SPECT and multislice CT for the detection of parathyroid adenomas largely disappears when images from the two modalities are combined using postacquisition fusion software.

Medical procedures performed to protect a radiologist against the threat of future litigation make little practical sense, according to an evaluation of the malpractice claims experience of nearly 5500 radiologists across the nation.

An Israeli HMO has reduced its high-tech imaging costs with the help of American College of Radiology appropriateness criteria that guide CT and MR use for its 1.6 million members.

Geographic variations as large as 47% for medical imaging have been identified in the first systematic study of its kind, performed by researchers at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. A comparison of changes in geographic utilization rates from 1997 to 2002 reveals that cardiologists have higher growth rates for Medicare-reimbursed imaging than radiologists or other physicians who perform medical imaging, said Dr. Vijay Rao, radiology director at Jefferson.

In radiology, cost-effectiveness is usually gauged in terms of minimizing cost to maximize the diagnostic yield of a particular procedure. On Monday, Dr. Giles Boland added a different parameter. Assuming that a busy imaging department has a virtually unlimited supply patients, the Massachusetts General Hospital radiologist found that the department can generate up to an additional $6.2 million by assigning two or three technologists to maximize the productivity of a multislice CT scanner.

Radiologists need to communicate with referring physicians more often and listen more closely to orthopedics surgeons’ reporting preferences, according to the results of University of California, San Diego survey that were announced Tuesday at the RSNA meeting.

Slightly more than one of every 10 patients with moderate-to-severe kidney disease who undergo coronary angiography enhanced with iopamidol or iodixinol contrast media will die or experience another major adverse event, such as stroke or myocardial infarction, in the year following imaging because of contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) associated with the procedure.

Women with a history of biopsy-proven lobular carcinoma in situ (LCIS) appear to benefit from the addition of MRI to mammography for annual breast cancer screening. A retrospective study from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute presented Sunday at the 2010 RSNA meeting indicates the application of screening MRI for this at-risk population can double the cancer detection rate.