Learning Radiology for Step 1

[JSReed]

Anyone have any resources they learned to understand basic radiologic findings (xrays, ultrasounds, etc)? Not looking for anything deep, just would like to be able to identify where the lesion/mass is on a given radiograph.

I'm working through the Q banks rn (step 1 in 6mo) and literally have no clue about anything radiology. We had a radiology class in school but honestly none of it really stuck long-term.

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[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Radiopaedia is a great place to start. Aunt Minnie’s has practice cases you can do (some are easier, some are more advanced).

 

[Deecee2DO]

Pretty LY but youtube will cover the important ones if you decide you wanna look it over a week or so before ur exam. I wouldnt spend too much time on rads for Step 1. poor use of time imo

 

[ArteryStudyPainting]

I would just understand certain concepts like the following: consider this, if you had a patient with a flare of Ms and they did not tell you outright it was a flare of Ms but it was a young female who has all of these weird issues going on especially with her eyes, what is the best viewing modality to see if there's an issue with her eyes relating to her MS? Is there such a thing?

these are the things you really need to know for step one. Not necessarily reading them but being able to reason out answers relating to them and their photos. What can you read with what, and LY, what are the complications involved.

 

[ArteryStudyPainting]

And to be fair, a lot of the stuff you're going to see like the person above me said, is going to be basically answerable without even seeing a photo if they gave you a photo.

My friend would answer all these questions even without seeing any of the photos he was given just because they were superfluous in many cases.

 

[Deecee2DO]

The highest yield info for Step 1 radiology is to know what vertebral level different organs lie at and the relationships of organs to one another; I got asked a question what vertebral level a CT slice was at and one asking what spinal segment I was in based on the grey matter morphology. Otherwise the big things to know would be what a pneumothorax looks like and be able to identify blood (white/ lighter grey than the organ it’s surrounding), and maybe vessels on a CTA. It’ll really mostly be clinical contexts where the radiology is just a supporting feature, and should all be images you’ve seen in your coursework I.e. Embryology question after seeing a bicorniate uterus.

Id say the best thing you can do is keep some sort of reminder to use Google or radiopedia to look up what pathological anatomy looks like whenever it’s mentioned in a practice question.

Yeah but you dont need to be able to interpret the rad image to answer correctly. it just can help narrow down the answer if you do