Is Burnout Worse for Radiologists in Canada than it is for Radiologists in the U.S.?
New research recently published in theJournal of the American College of Radiologyshows us that it might be more emotionally challenging to be radiologist in Canada than in the U.S.Physician shortages can be a major source of burnout for doctors of all specialities. Many countries grapple with physician shortages. The United States, Canada, Poland, South Korea, and Mexico have some of the lowest doctor to patient ratios, with the average being 2.32 among those nations.TheNew England Journal of Medicine predictsthat by 2025, the U.S. will be in need of between 61,700 and 94,700 doctors.In Canada, there are not enough ra...
Source: radRounds - October 19, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
New Ultrasound Tech Software Auto-Populates Measurements and Decreases Report
Using a transfer-software tool to auto-populate ultrasound measurement increases accuracy and reduces time and money spent on creating reports, according to a new studypublished inCurrent Problems in Diagnostic Radiology. Ultrasound technologists and radiologists tediously write, check, and edit measurements that are recorded by hand or dictated from worksheets. This process is susceptible to errors that can influence results.Researchers from the Montefiore Medical Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine wanted to decrease the time spent on this process, so they introduced a software that would auto-fill the ...
Source: radRounds - October 19, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
ACR Gold Medal Winners Announced
The American College of Radiology will award three radiologists with Gold Medalsfor their contributions to the specialty at the organization ’s May 2019 conference.The medal-winning physicians Bibb Allen, Jr, MD, Manuel L. Brown, MD, and David C. Kushner, MD have all been practicing radiologists for decades and each have held prominent leadership positions.Dr. Allen is the chief medical officer of the ACR ’s Data Science Institute and former chair of the college’s board of chancellors. The Birmingham, Alabama-based radiologist has been practicing for 35 years. He entered medicine as a surgery resident but changed t...
Source: radRounds - October 12, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Southern California Imaging Center Mogul Indicted for $284 million in Healthcare Fraud
Sam Sarkis Solakyan, the owner of several medical imaging companies in Southern California, has been indicted for conspiring to commit honest services mail fraud, healthcare fraud, aiding, and abetting. He was arrested on September 26, 2018.According to the unsealed indictmentfiled in late September, between 2012 and 2015, Solakyan conspired with chiropractor Steven Rigler; his clinic manager, Alexander Martinez; and Fermin Iglesias and Carlos Arguello, owners of a handful of patient services companies, to pay physicians to refer their Workers ’ Compensation patients to Solakyan’s businesses for medical imaging proce...
Source: radRounds - October 12, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Why Most Parents Can ’t Understand Pediatric Radiation Safety Guides
Pediatric radiation safety guidelines are written at far too difficult reading levels for the average parent to understand, according to a studyrecently published in theAmerican Journal of Roentgenology.Researchers from the Johns Hopkins Hospital assessed 54 articles on patient safety that were published on websites such as the Society for Pediatric Radiology, RadiologyInfo, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Using the ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) scale, they found that 91 percent of articles were “very difficult,” “difficult,” or “fairly difficult” for the typical parent. On average, the articles were g...
Source: radRounds - October 12, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Using fMRI to Get Over Heartbreak
Rapper Dessa was having a hard time getting over her ex-boyfriend. For years, she felt trapped in a mental cycle of obsession and pining. After unsuccessfully trying all of the traditional break-up remedies (time, distance, and focusing on friendships), she knew she had to do something radical.Helen Fisher ’s fMRI study on the neural mechanisms of being in love inspired Dessa to examine how her heartbreak is reflected in her brain. She put a call out on Twitter asking if anyone wanted to trade fMRI scans for backstage tickets and whiskey.A barter was made, and Dessa went in for her fMRI scans at the University of Minneso...
Source: radRounds - October 5, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Is Simulation Training Better than Anesthesia for Young Patients Before Their MRI?
Simulation training is a viable way to determine if children need to undergo anesthesia before their scheduled MRI, according to a studyrecently published in theJournal of the American College of Radiology.Children can get squirmy and anxious while undergoing an MRI. The claustrophobia and noise creates a stressful environment for them, which is why physicians typically recommend sedation and general anesthesia to make sure they can successfully complete the procedure. However, new research from theNationwide Children ’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio has found that simulation-based training on MRI experience in children f...
Source: radRounds - October 5, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Using MRI to Create 3D Heart Models to Improve Cardiac Procedures
Researchers at John Hopkins University ’s schools of Engineering and Medicine are using MRI images of human hearts to create 3D personalized models for physicians to identify and eradicate heart tissue that can cause the organ to go into cardiac arrhythmia. Their findings were recently publishedinNature Biomedical Engineering.Typically, cardiac ablation, or the process of locating and destroying tissue associated with errant electrical impulses, involves loose estimations and uncertainty. The conventional procedure requires the physician to thread a catheter to the heart and destroy specific heart tissues using radiofre...
Source: radRounds - October 5, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Can MRI Show Us How Mindfulness Relates to Pain?
People who are more in tune to mindfulness experience less physical pain than those who struggle with staying in the present, says a studyscheduled to be published inPAIN.Researchers from the Wake Forest School of Medicine wanted to figure out if a person ’s natural inclination toward mindfulness was connected to stronger pain sensitivity, and how the brain demonstrates these pain signals. The researchers invited 76 participants who had never practiced mediation to complete the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory, an evaluation that rates their level of mindfulness. The participants then had MRI exams while being administer...
Source: radRounds - October 5, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Learning about MRI Limitations at the Brain Museum
At the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences ’s Brain Museum in Bengaluru, India, visitors can touch and feel real human brains. In 1979, the museum started collecting brains that have endured some kind of disease or infection. Today, the museum houses all kinds of brains — from healthy hosts to patients who died from Japanese encephalitis , among a wide variety of conditions.The brains are preserved in Formalin, giving them a shiny, fresh glow. The museum once received around 300 brains a year to autopsy. However, that rate has declined since the invention of MRI. Today, there is minimal reason to ask ...
Source: radRounds - October 5, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Hundreds of Thousands of MRI Orders Cancelled at VA Hospitals
Mass cancellations of imaging scans at Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals across the country have prompted the VA inspector general to conduct audits at nine medical centers.Hospitals in Tampa and Bay Pines Florida; Salisbury, North Carolina; Cleveland, Ohio; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; Las Vegas, Nevada; Los Angeles, California; and Iowa City, Iowa are the subjects of these audits. AnUSA Today investigationhas found that VA hospitals in Columbia, South Carolina have up to 29,512 outstanding imaging orders, and in Cleveland, around 21,600 orders have been cancelled. The number of total cancellations topples 250,000.Acc...
Source: radRounds - October 5, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
VR Helps Diffuse MRI Fears for Children and Their Parents
National Health Service physicist Jonathan Ashmore, PhD, has spearheaded the development of a virtual reality (VR) app that gives children who are nervous about their upcoming MRI an exact idea of what the procedure looks like.Children and their parents alike can be very anxious about a scheduled MRI. The inter-family anxiety can only worsen the experience for the young patient. The free app delivers a 360-degree perspective from inside the MRI so that children and fearful adults can be emotionally prepared for the experience before they undergo the scan. The app can be especially useful for evaluating epilepsy cases. It ...
Source: radRounds - September 20, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Bi-annual MRI More Effective than Annual Mammogram for Breast Cancer Detection
This study could significantly change the way we approach breast cancer screening." MRI is much more sensitive than mammography, " saidGreg Karczmar, PhD, professor of radiology at the University of Chicago. " It can find invasive breast cancers sooner than mammograms and it can rule out abnormalities that appear suspicious on a mammogram. Unfortunately, MRI is much too expensive for routine screening. " (Source: radRounds)
Source: radRounds - September 20, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Are Disappearing Contrast Agents the Future of MRI?
Contrast agents illuminate the body ’s organs and tissues, making it easier for physicians to accurately read the MRI scan. However, it can be challenging to identify the agents from the actual body, so researchers from the California Institute of Technology have created “erasable” contrast agents that can be turned off with ult rasound." It ' s the same principle behind blinking bicycle lights, ”saidMikhail Shapiro, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Caltech. “Having the lights turn on and off makes them easier to see, only in our case we just blink off the contrast agent once.”In their paper pub...
Source: radRounds - September 20, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
Fractal Discovery Could Quadruple the Speed of MRI
Researchers from the University of Queensland are using fractals to accelerate magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, which would make them less expensive to process.In a studyrecently published inIEEE Transactions on Image Processing,Shekhar Chandra, PhD, a lecturer at the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, has identified a new mathematical pattern, or fractals, which could increase the MRI processing time by four-fold. According to Dr. Chandra, this is the biggest fractal discovery since the 1970s, and the first time the science is being used in MRI technology.A fractal is an infinite pattern...
Source: radRounds - September 13, 2018 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
