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Radiology Lexicon

Willford Hall Medical Center San Antonio, TX 78240

Few specialties have developed a descriptive lexicon that can compete with that of radiology. During a recent intensive review of the entire specialty (for the diagnostic written examination), the range of potential descriptors I encountered was astounding. By keeping my list from the review, adding to it from the program's daily lectures, and using a thesaurus, I was able to expand the list to match a single descriptor with each percentage point from 0 to 100. The ranking and ordering of the list is mine and I take full responsibility, although I welcome input from readers.

Table 1 is the complete list of descriptors; they are formatted to fill the blank in the following sentence: "This finding [UNK] represents a given disease process." For example, "Airspace consolidation usually represents pneumonia." In my list, this would mean that airspace consolidation is pneumonia 84% of the time. The list is pared down in Table 2 to a baker's dozen and is further pared in Table 3 to a workable list of four possibilities. Although we may not have it in us to cut to just four, we could probably get accustomed to 13! This may even make us more intelligible to our peers in other specialties who read (do they?) our reports. A disclaimer is, however, in order: There is no intent to assign medicolegal meanings or percentages to these descriptors.

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This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Casford, B. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Casford, B. Social Bookmarking                      What's this?