Discrepancies in Reporting the Vertebral Level of Abnormality in MR of the Spine

摘要

Purpose: The aim of rhis study was to assess discrepancies in the spinal levels ol abnormalities stated in rhe findings or impression (or both) sections of radiology reports ol magnetic resonance (MR) imaging.Materials and Methods: Radiology reports from January 2006 through December 2007 (n=2,097,966) were analyzed using an online radiology report" search engine. Reports were searched for presence of the keywords MR spine and addendum. THe addended reports were then manually assessed for any discrepancies in the reported spinal levels between the body and impression sections; the addenda corrected these errors (identified errors). In addirion, all reports with the search term MR.spine from January 2006 (n =1,183) and |anuary 2007 (n=1,354) were assessed manually ro recognize unidentified errors in spinal locarions of reported pathology. Two ncuroradiologisis independently graded the clinical significance of errors on a 5-point scale (1=definitely not significant, 5= definitely significant).