Evaluation of chest ultrasound reports for pleural effusions

Abstract

Chest ultrasound is a frequent request in patients with suspected pleural effusion and for therapeutic planning in patients with known pleural effusion. Radiology reporting of such request has to be meaningful to the referring clinician. AIM: To evaluate the report adequacy of chest ultrasound reports authored by various operators, determine if there is an association between the report adequacy and the level of experience of an operator. METHOD: Retrospective study of chest ultrasound reports with pleural effusion. The reports of both diagnostic ultrasound request and therapeutic ultrasound request were evaluated using a designed data collection sheet based on the literature search. Each report was awarded a score of possible maximum 4/4 for diagnostic ultrasound and 8/8 for therapeutic ultrasound. RESULTS: The mean adequacy score of diagnostic ultrasound reports was 3.01 ±1.05 SD (range 0-4) and for the therapeutic ultrasound reports was 4.32 ±1.81 SD (range 1-8). The therapeutic ultrasound components were poorly reported. There were only 5% reports with a maximum score of 8/8 for therapeutic ultrasound reports. The sonographers performed better than the radiologists and the registrars but there was no statistically significant difference with regards to level of ranks and adequacy score of the report. CONCLUSIONS: The current reporting of chest ultrasound is sub-standard with therapeutic ultrasound of the chest being reported more poorly than the diagnostic ultrasound of the chest. A reporting template was designed for recommending to the department in order to improve reporting standard.