Radiology reports: Examining radiologist and clinician preferences regarding style and content

OBJECTIVE. The introduction of picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) frequently includes the option of the computer-generated itemized re ports. This motivated us to reassess the merits of traditional prose dictat ed reports. This study examines radiologist and clinician preferences regar ding report style and content. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The study was conducted in two parts, The first part was a retrospective audit of existing medical imaging prose reports to det ermine their content. The second part comprised a questionnaire containing three mock clinical scenarios. Three pairs of reports were provided for eac h scenario, with only essential information in the first pair, some optiona l information in the second, and the most complete report in the third. Eac h pair consisted of a prose and itemized report with identical content. Par ticipants ranked reports by preference and were asked specific questions re garding report content. The questionnaires were mailed to referring clinici ans and administered during an interactive forum to staff radiologists. rad iology fellows, and radiology residents. RESULTS. The audit of existing reports showed a wide variation in all field s with consistency limited to a given radiologist. Responses to the questio nnaire showed that, in general, a majority of radiologists and referring cl inicians preferred itemized reports. The itemized report port with the most detailed content was ranked highest all three scenarios. CONCLUSION. Prose reports foster a lack of standardization of content among different radiologists. Itemized reports facilitate complete documentation of information and measurements and are more popular with hr,th radiologis ts and referring clinicians.