Comparing thoracic and abdominal subspecialists’ follow-up recommendations for abdominal findings identified on chest CT

摘要

Abstract Purpose To compare thoracic and abdominal radiologists’ follow-up recommendations for abdominal findings identified on chest CT.Methods This Institutional Review Board-exempt, retrospective study was performed at a large academic medical center with subspecialty radiology divisions. We used a combination of natural language processing and manual reviews to identify chest CT reports with and without abdominal findings that were interpreted by thoracic radiologists in 2019. Three random samples of reports were reviewed by two subspecialty trained abdominal radiologists for their agreement with thoracic radiologists’ reporting: abdominal findings with follow-up recommendation (Group 1), abdominal findings without follow-up recommendation (Group 2), and no abdominal findings reported (Group 3). Primary outcome was agreement between thoracic and abdominal radiologists for the need for follow-up of abdominal findings. Secondary outcomes were agreement between subspecialists for the presence of abdominal findings and referring clinician adherence to recommendations. Fischer’s exact test was used to compare proportions.Results Abdominal radiologists agreed with need for follow-up in 48.5 (16/33) of Group 1 cases and agreed follow-up was not necessary for 100 (34/34) of Group 2 cases (p?