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[The radiologic report and its readability]
V Cavallo1, M R D'aprile, S Lanciotti
1Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale e Patologia, I Cattedra di Radiologia, Università La Sapienza, Rome, Italy. vincenzo.cavallo@uniromal.it
Aim:
The aim of this study was to evaluate the readability of radiologic reports and to determine whether they can be improved by modifying then according to precisely defined rules.
Material And Methods:
Forty reports, 10 for each diagnostic procedure (conventional radiography, US, CT, MRI); were randomly selected from a corpus of 400. The reports were analysed quantitatively using a dedicated software and qualitatively taking into account the formal, syntactic and lexical aspects of linguistically correct language and specially defined rules. On the basis of the collected results the reports were modified and analysed.
Results:
Once again the modifications resulted in increased legibility (as testified by readability indices) that was more evident in US and X-ray reports and less evident in CT and MR reports because of the quantity of technical terms. It hoped that a radiological lexicon and guidelines for report writing will be widely adapted, so that radiologic reports will be more readable and easy understand.