Cardiac MRI

[OHMAN0125]

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Recently a cardiologist had a long presentation on cardiac MRI at my school. I was a bit shocked to hear that they are trying to open more programs in cardiac MRI and CT. Do you think this imaging modality will be lost to the power hungry cardiologists like what happened with nuclear imaging? Seems like they have a nice track record of taking other specialties work. Any thoughts?

 

[colbgw02]

Interesting question. I'm not sure whether or not they really stole MPS - at least 2/3, and maybe all, of the hospitals where I've worked still had nuclear medicine MPS done my radiology (nuclear medicine). They definitely stole interventional procedures, and I'm not aware of how much radiologists were ever into echocardiography.

I wonder if the more complicated physics behind MR might discourage them. When their images look like butt, they won't know how to fix them without learning a big about it or hiring a physicists to do it for them. <<shrugs>>

 

[Neuronix]

A buddy of mine claims that cardio has already picked up all the CT and MR at his hospital and the hospital admin tossed out the Cardiovascular Radiologists. It does scare me a bit...

 

[OHMAN0125]

A buddy of mine claims that cardio has already picked up all the CT and MR at his hospital and the hospital admin tossed out the Cardiovascular Radiologists. It does scare me a bit...

Tossed out radiologists? That is highly unlikely given the demand for them. You should know that radiologists know how to read most modalities and not just one type. CV radiology is a rather new fellowship out of DR. Although cardiologists can read the CT and MR of the heart, they can't read all the other structures. That's why they always need a "cover read" from a radiologist. That's why i doubt ur friend's claim that they got rid of these radiologists.

 

[RoentgenRayz]

What do you mean by "cover read"?

 

[doepug]

I think reimbursement for cardiac MR is sufficiently low (given labor-intensive exam, low patient turnover, prohibitive MR physics, etc) that cardiologists won't gobble it up to any great degree.

CT is another story... everyone is an armchair radiologist, especially when we can make such pretty pictures. We have to decide whether we're willing to put in the work to keep cardiac CT in our field. At the same time, I've seen some pretty embarrassing rookie mistakes from cardiologists who tout themselves as CT experts (e.g. calling aortic dissection where there is streak or motion artifact).

The overread refers to radiologists reading the non-cardiac portion of an exam to find the odd lung nodule, PE, etc that the cardiologist would miss. Many radiologists view this practice as self-defeating, since it feeds the beast that is killing us.

 

[Taurus]

Who knows how this will shape up, but I have no doubt that the DRA and more imaging cuts and more awareness and laws against self-referral will have some impact one way or another. I think reading images will be less and less attractive to other groups except rads in the future.