Structured reporting for CT imaging of trauma patients can produce faster, more detailed diagnoses, according to a new analysis published Friday in the European Journal of Radiology.
Whole-body computed tomography has been recommended as a standard tool for assessing patients with a traumatic injury. However, providers can sometimes miss injuries in their reports, leading to delayed care and worse outcomes.
Wanting to better understand the importance of templates in this scenario, researchers deployed eight radiology residents using both structured and free-text reports to assess 14 CT scans in a simulated setting. They discovered clear benefit for the former, highlighting structured reporting’s conciseness, clarity and efficiency.
“We found that [structured reports] for whole-body trauma CT add clinical value compared to [free-text reports] because SRs reduce reporting time and increase the level of detail for trauma CT scans,” Tobias Jorg, with the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at University Medical Center Mainz in Germany, and co-authors wrote Sept. 17.
For their study, residents were tasked with creating both a brief and detailed report using the two different formats. Researchers timed their work and also administered a questionnaire afterward. Participants completed the structured reports in 19 minutes compared to 25 for the free-form version. And the maximum allowance of 25 minutes was used about 25% of the time for structured work compared to 59% less-defined approach.
Brief structured reports also offered more secondary criteria compared to free-text versions, with little difference in the main criteria. In follow-up questioning, participants found SR much more efficient, concise and clearly structured, but did not see the difference in quality, accuracy and completeness, Jorg et al. reported.
Read the rest of the analysis in EJR here.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.