American Journal of Roentgenology, Vol 168, 1409-1413, Copyright © 1997 by American Roentgen Ray Society
Chest teleradiology in a teaching hospital emergency practice
RJ Steckel, P Batra, S Johnson, M Zucker, J Sayre, J Goldin, M Lee, M Patel and H Morrison
Department of Radiological Sciences, UCLA School of Medicine 90095- 1721, USA.
OBJECTIVE: New standards for hospital accreditation and health care
reimbursement may require that faculty subspecialists be more available
after regular working hours to supervise residents in academic radiology
departments. We designed a receiver operating characteristic study to
determine whether a thoracic radiologist who evaluated computed radiography
(CR) images of the chest at a home-based teleradiology workstation could
add significant value to a junior resident's interpretations of films
within the hospital for acutely ill patients. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: Using a
hybrid cassette, we obtained analog chest films and CR images
simultaneously for each of 252 acutely ill patients in the emergency
department and in an intensive care unit. Interpretations of the analog
films by three first-year residents were analyzed for 11 parameters deemed
critical for patient management. Likewise, CR images of the same chest
studies were viewed on a home teleradiology workstation by a faculty
thoracic radiologist who analyzed the images for these 11 interpretive
parameters. All interpretations by radiology residents and by the
home-based thoracic radiologist were then compared with the interpretations
of a consensus panel consisting of another thoracic radiologist and a
full-time emergency department radiologist. RESULTS: Analysis of the pooled
results from the three junior residents as a group failed to show
significant differences between their interpretations of chest films and
the interpretations of CR images by a thoracic radiologist at a home
workstation. However, we observed significant differences for several image
interpretation parameters between individual residents and the home-based
radiology subspecialist. CONCLUSION: The data confirm that significant
value can be added to the interpretations of chest films by individual
junior residents when a home-based thoracic radiologist uses teleradiology
to provide expert interpretations. Accordingly, it is reasonable to infer
that on-line supervision by faculty subspecialists via teleradiology could
be used to complement the scheduled visits that are being made now by
individual faculty members of our institution to interpret films
periodically with a radiology resident during overnight and weekend
periods.