Clinicians’ Analyses of Descriptive Reports

Next, we evaluated in paired comparisons (1) the agreement between the clinicians’ interpretation of the routine reports and (2) the agreement among clinicians’ interpretations of the descriptive routine reports and the standardized conclusions given by the nuclear medicine physicians.

The agreement was evaluated by the percentage of concordance. The kappa indexes and their 95% confidence intervals were calculated to evaluate the degree of agreement by taking into account the random concordance. Then, using the standardized conclusions as a reference, we compared the percentage of well-classified routine reports in each category for each clinician rising the x2 test.

Results

Patients Description

Lung scans performed for suspicion of pulmonary embolism in 82 patients were included in the study. The 82 patients were 20 to 93 years old (mean [ ± SD] age, 64.6 ± 16.9). Canadian health mall Reading here All patients underwent perfusion imaging studies, and 37 (45%) also had ventilation studies.

Agreement Analysis

The distribution of conclusions drawn from routine descriptive reports differed widely among clinicians (p < 0.001). Conclusions of “high probability ranged from 8.6 to 29.3%, and conclusions of “diagnosis excluded” ranged from 20.7 to 43.9% (Table 1).

Table 1—Degree of Agreement in Clinicians’ Analyses of Descriptive Reports