Always review imaging yourself

I recently had two patients that I sent for MRI’s at a facility I always use. This is a great facility and they have musculoskeletal radiologists reading my films, but often things are missed or not mentioned because they feel it isn’t relevant.

Don’t assume they have covered everything. As ID providers we understand MS problems better than anyone else and can really put pathology into context. I found two relevant findings the radiologist missed–one being an cervical annular tear–and the radiologist admitted that he had missed it and made addendums to the reports. He told me he never has other dr’s look over reports like that!

If you aren’t very good at reading MRI’s yet then practice! Early on I would compare images to regular and pathological images on google. Then I would call and speak with the radiologists to explain findings that I wasn’t sure about.