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What do these guys do exactly? Someone please explain! I don't understand... they don't just look at X-rays all day do they? Why do they make so much money? Why are they needed? Isn't it a boring job?
What does a radiologist do?
- Thread starter kreno
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Social skills are in the eye of the beholder kreno. If that's the way you ask people about their profession, you have a lot to learn about social skills.
A lot of things I could try to explain to you won't make sense until you finish your third year of medical school. So it would be hard to gain a true appreciation for what radiologists do. And they do such a wide variety of procedures and imaging that it would be difficult to explain it succintly I will say that we read imaging studies, plain film xrays, CT, MRIs, Ultrasounds, and flouroscopy for a wide variety of clinical problems, ie to establish a diagnosis, for treatment planning/staging and following progression of disease.
On the interventional radiology side, we use flouroscopy (kinda like plain film xrays only it is in real-time and can be repeated with the push of a pedal) to image vessels by inserting catheters in arteries and veins and injecting dye. We can also use those same catheters after injecting dye and establishing a diagnosis or gaining anatomic information, to treat diseases by occluding blood vessels with various agents such as coils or we can open up perpheral blood vessels with angioplasty and possibly stenting. Also we do a wide variety of biospies usually image guided by CT / US through the skin with long needles to take a sample of a suspicious lesion found on imaging or physical exam.
A lot of things I could try to explain to you won't make sense until you finish your third year of medical school. So it would be hard to gain a true appreciation for what radiologists do. And they do such a wide variety of procedures and imaging that it would be difficult to explain it succintly I will say that we read imaging studies, plain film xrays, CT, MRIs, Ultrasounds, and flouroscopy for a wide variety of clinical problems, ie to establish a diagnosis, for treatment planning/staging and following progression of disease.
On the interventional radiology side, we use flouroscopy (kinda like plain film xrays only it is in real-time and can be repeated with the push of a pedal) to image vessels by inserting catheters in arteries and veins and injecting dye. We can also use those same catheters after injecting dye and establishing a diagnosis or gaining anatomic information, to treat diseases by occluding blood vessels with various agents such as coils or we can open up perpheral blood vessels with angioplasty and possibly stenting. Also we do a wide variety of biospies usually image guided by CT / US through the skin with long needles to take a sample of a suspicious lesion found on imaging or physical exam.
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Please lets try to be somewhat civil! The original question may have been borderline, but I don't think that it deserved such a vicious response. We should all act in somewhat of a professional manner even if we are nameless and faceless.
I have deleted all but the original question and the informative response.
I have deleted all but the original question and the informative response.
