Neurologist I'm working with never looks at the radiology reports

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hiltonty997

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This probably shouldn't bother me at all, but it does and I just want to rant about it. I've been working with a neurologist (specializes in demylelinating diseases) and she acts like neuroradiologists do not exist.

I'm sure she has been looking at scans for many years now and is competent in her niche, but we found some questionable findings on a few scans today that he wasn't sure about, and it didn't even cross her mind to check the reports.

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That is his choice to do so. Orthopods and neurosurgeons don't usually care much about what the radiology report says either. More power to them.

Specialists often only concern themselves with the issue they've been consulted on. The neurologist may only care about the change in character or number of the patient's prior demyelinating plaques.

The PCP can figure out what to do with the skull mets and the sinus disease.

Ultimately the person who orders the scan bears the legal responsibility for anything incidentally uncovered. If he doesn't want to read my report; it's not my problem. That is the beauty of being a radiologist.
 
Yeah I guess that's the way to look at it.

It was obvious that the images from the scan were out of her usual scope of practice and it was definitely not the usual clinical presentation of her particular field, so I was just thinking the whole time "Umm... shouldn't we maybe even just check and see what the attending neuroradiologist thought?" Isn't that exactly what radiologists are for?
 
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This is very uncommon and there are dangerous doctors in all scopes of medicine who ignore certain things at their own peril. I remember rotating through ortho and was surprised at an ortho surgeon who would just let residents operate and peek his head in the OR once and a while just to make sure everything was going OK, only to sign off the procedure note later as if he was present the entire time.
 
This probably shouldn't bother me at all, but it does and I just want to rant about it. I've been working with a neurologist (specializes in demylelinating diseases) and she acts like neuroradiologists do not exist.

I'm sure she has been looking at scans for many years now and is competent in her niche, but we found some questionable findings on a few scans today that he wasn't sure about, and it didn't even cross her mind to check the reports.

I always review the neuroimaging studies (CT, MRI, PET, etc) that I order for my patients...but I also read the radiologist's report. Many but not all of my neurology and neurosurgery colleagues do the same. There are some (more neurologists than surgical types) who don't bother reviewing the images and just rely on the reports.

Reviewing the images and the reports seems the best strategy, based on the idea that two observers are usually better than one. I think that it is risky for any physician to ignore the official radiologist report of a neuroimaging study.
 
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