Mid-year clinical update tracks radiology's course since the RSNA

The RSNA is without doubt the big Kahuna of radiology medical meetings. With 60,000+ attendees and a program book that spans nearly 1000 pages in small type, the fall RSNA meeting sets the agenda for much of what goes on in radiology.

But between the time the RSNA meeting closes shop in December and resumes on Thanksgiving weekend a year later, a lot happens in radiology. A series of specialty meetings and one general session in the spring following the RSNA meeting generate a host of new developments that also play an important role in advancing the specialty.

Recognizing those developments and calling them to your attention is the idea behind our midyear clinical update, now in its third year. By attending many of those meetings, watching the literature, and surveying experts in the field, we draw out new and important research and trends that will help shape practice into the future. In addition, we highlight economic or political developments that carry clinical impact, again with a focus on what has happened since the RSNA conference.

This year's midyear clinical update contains a mix of all three elements: research, economics, and politics. A government proposal that would have shut down coronary CT angiography scans was scuttled. A study at the Society of Interventional Radiology meeting revealed how functional MRI could help monitor liver chemoembolization. One-year results from a study of the effect of FDG-PET on cancer staging were published and revealed that the modality led to changes in more than a third of cases.

There's more there. Please take a look and let us know what you think.

-John C. Hayes is editor of Diagnostic Imaging.