Evaluation of chest X-ray readings by emergency room physicians of a universitary hospital

BACKGROUND: We aimed to find out whether systematic reading of chest radiog raphy (CRx) by radiologists in the emergency unit might lead to a higher di agnostic efficiency and improve health care. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Descriptive study of consecutive admissions during 3 m onths in an internal medicine department. We registered the CRx interpretat ion by the emergency unit physician first, and a radiologist the next day. In cases with different interpretations we assessed whether these differenc es would have modified the treatment. RESULTS: The overall disagreement between the emergency room physician and the radiologist was 13.7%. In 19 of 29 cases with different readings, the r adiologist interpretation was in agreement with the final diagnosis. In 7 o f these 19 cases, the radiologist reading of CRx would have led to a positi ve change of treatment. However, differences between both physicians were n ot statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS: There seems to be a higher diagnostic efficiency when the emer gency room physician interpretation of CRx is complemented by a radiologist .