Yomi Wrong

During 18 years as a radiologic technologist, JeffCrowley acknowledged he sometimes thought,"Oh, I can do that," while assisting withprocedures.

A survey of academic radiologists’ clinical productivity shows that workload continues to increase, in both exam volume and complexity. Academic department heads could use the survey data to help set staffing levels and evaluate the performance of individual radiologists.

It's been a year since practice manager Lorna Vaughan took out an ad seeking a breast imager to work on the Jersey Shore. To her surprise, a "dream-come-true, fee-for-service, patient- focused, personal and compassionate practice with partnership and ownership opportunity" has been a hard sell.

Most radiology practices are governed haphazardly, act unpredictably, and tend to succeed in spite of what they do rather than because of it.

When I left a career in daily newspapers to join Diagnostic Imaging, I relied upon an old journalism proverb to guide me: Tell it to your Aunt Edna.

The number of students taking radiography and radiation therapy examinations for the first time slowed in 2007, signaling that educational programs are scaling back admissions and the pool of qualified technologists is meeting practice demand. Only nuclear medicine saw a sharp increase -- 17.1 % over 2006 -- although those numbers too are expected to decline, according to the American Registry of Radiologic Technologists.

Contrary to concerns about teleradiology encroachment, a Yale University survey finds that use of external after-hours services accounts for a small percentage of radiology practices’ total interpretations. Interpretation by foreign-trained radiologists is not widespread.

The American Board of Radiology now offers a certificate in hospice and palliative care, designed for doctors whose work involves the care of seriously ill and dying patients.

Now that computer-aided detection has become part of routine clinical work for cancer screening in mammograms and is being applied in the differential diagnosis of cancer in the lung and colon, it's only a matter of time before it rates as the standard of care for diagnostic examinations in daily clinical work.

The Alliance for Radiation Safety in Pediatric Imaging rolled out its Image Gently campaign in January with a successful website launch and maintained that momentum through the first half of 2008 with showings at key medical conferences.

In what is likely a precursor to uniform standards for clinical teleradiology, an international network of radiology organizations has drafted guidelines for the burgeoning teleradiology industry.

When it comes to getting respect, radiologists are apparently the Rodney Dangerfield of the medical profession.

The healthcare system is in shambles, the economy is imploding, and radiology groups across the country are suffering. What else is new?

Though University of Pittsburgh Alzheimer’s disease researchers believed it all along, groundbreaking research now confirms that Pittsburgh Compound B binds to the beta-amyloid deposits found in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s. The finding is a major step toward an early, definitive diagnosis of the memory-stealing disease in living patients.

Widespread muscle and tissue pain, tenderness, and fatigue are well-documented symptoms of fibromyalgia, a chronic condition that affects up to an estimated 6% of the U.S. population. The underlying pathology of the pain disease is unknown. A new study featuring proton MR spectroscopy, however, has found a key linkage between the pain and a specific brain molecule.

A review of 32 studies examining medical imaging of obese patients found that extremely large women are less likely than smaller women to be screened for breast, colon, and cervical cancer. The analysis also revealed surprising trends along racial lines, indicating that overweight white women are less likely than their black counterparts to undergo screening.

A website that allows patients to calculate radiation exposure levels for particular exams is drawing fire from some radiologists, who question whether the health plan-owned company is using safety as a smokescreen for profit management.

Calcium deposits in coronary arteries provide a strong predictor for incidence of heart attack and cardiac disease, and detecting such deposits via CT scanning can help promote overall cardiac health in racially and ethnically diverse populations, according to a new study in March 28 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.