Evaluation of PACS at Hammersmith Hospital: assessment of radiology performance in the accident and emergency department

摘要

Abstract: In the Accident and Emergency Department (A&E) x-ray images are used to assist in the initial diagnosis and management of the patient. It is therefore expected that the main benefits of PACS in A&E will arise from the ability of clinicians to manipulate the digital image and thus potentially improve their diagnostic performance. In order to evaluate whether this benefit is realized or not a case-study evaluation has been undertaken; this has three components: (a) monitoring the extent of misdiagnosis by A&E clinicians before and after the PACS implementation; (b) an examination of the decision performance of the clinician-image combination for the visualization of the lower cervical spine/upper thoracic spine and of fracture of the head of the radius; and (c) a more general monitoring of the impact of the image archiving and communication aspects of PACS. In this paper the study of the impact of PACS on misdiagnosis by A&E clinicians at the Hammersmith Hospital, London, is described and pre-PACS results for the period 31 March 1992 to 30 September 1992 are presented. !13