Contrasting pediatric specialty provider opinion between contextualized and structured radiology reports

Area of Science:

• Radiology and Medical Imaging
• Clinical Informatics

Background:

• Structured reporting (SR) is the standard for medical imaging, but can lack specificity for clinical indications.
• Contextual reporting (CR) tailors SR to specific clinical scenarios, including pertinent positive and negative findings.
• CR aims to improve report clarity and relevance for narrow clinical indications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess pediatric provider preferences for CR compared to traditional SR.
• To evaluate provider perceptions of interpretability between CR and SR.

Main Methods:

• A survey methodology was employed, distributing electronic surveys with SR and CR examples to pediatric specialists.
• Two groups were surveyed: pediatric neuroimaging (neurosurgery, neurology, ENT, ED, ophthalmology) and pediatric gastrointestinal (GI) imaging (gastroenterology, general surgery, ED).
• Surveys used a 5-point Likert scale and were analyzed using Fischer's exact test.

Main Results:

• 56% of respondents preferred CR over SR, with 59% finding CR easier to interpret.
• Pediatric GI imaging specialists showed a stronger preference for CR (68%) compared to pediatric neuroimaging specialists (44%).
• 81 out of 349 contacted individuals responded (23% response rate).

Conclusions:

• Developing CR for highly valued clinical indications is more beneficial than a broad approach.
• Further exploration into the utility of contextualized reports in pediatric imaging is warranted.
• Provider preference suggests CR can enhance the interpretability of radiology reports.